2014 Reading: The Death Cure

I finally got tired of waiting for a copy to become available at the library, so I just went and bought it.

I am so glad I did.

I had all kinds of things going through my mind as I was reading this: Would they survive? Who was WICKED? To what extent did Thomas have to do with the testing? Was WICKED really good? Who can you trust? I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS!!!!

I honestly don't know what I would do if I were in the situation that Thomas found himself. I think I would have just given up and died in the maze or something. All I know is that I could not have survived as long as he did or done the things he did to help others.

I usually don't like dystopia books, I don't know if I said that already or not, but this book series was awesome and I really enjoyed it. I can't wait for the movie to come out so that I can shamelessly ogle Dylan O'Brien while judging the film makers by how much they stuck to the original story. I've been doing that a lot lately. It's what happens when they keep making movies out of books.

There is a prequel out there (which I also bought) so I might get to that at some point but it won't be the next thing I read because I have already started another book that I found at the library and I actually don't know what to expect from it. All I know is that it's a subject matter that interests me greatly and I think I am going to enjoy it. I hope.

Until next time...

Shitty 80's Horror Movie Review: Friday the 13th (franchise)

Wow, I'm starting to run out of these now. I need to start watching on a regular basis again so that I can keep putting these things out.

Okay, so, this series...

So much Ed Gein references. Much.

Friday the 13th (1980)

Friday the 13th II (1981)

Friday the 13th III: 3d (1982)

Friday the 13th IV: The Final Chapter (1984)

Friday the 13th V: A New Beginning (1985)

Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives (1986)

Friday the 13th VII: The New Blood (1988)

Friday the 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Friday the 13th IX: Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

Friday the 13th X: Jason X (2002)

Friday the 13th XI: Freddy Vs. Jason (2003)

Friday the 13th *Remake* (2009)

God... 12 movies. TWELVE! All in all, I was happy with this franchise. I'm not saying I want any more... because I don't... but they were better than some of the movies I've watched for this blog *coughPhantasmcough*

2014 Reading: Red Dragon

I was amazed by how much the movie followed the book. AMAZED!

It's refreshing actually, to find when that happens because it is so rare. I mean, yeah, you have to take certain things into perspective because not everything can be translated from page to screen, but they actually did a very awesome job with it. So, bravo movie makers!

I've had all four of the Hannibal books for quite some time now and I am just now getting to them. I needed something to read while I was waiting for the third installment of the Maze Runner books so this seemed like a good time to break out the Thomas Harris. (BTW, I ended up buying the Maze Runner books because I was becoming too impatient waiting for it to become available at the library so I'll be getting to the last one next anyway. Oh well.)

I kept a lot of things in mind while I was reading Red Dragon. I tried to remember what I could of the movie, plus all the other movies in the series (I haven't seen Manhunter, though, because I heard it was a giant pile of crap, but whatever). I also have been watching the TV show that they made with the characters from Red Dragon and I tried to keep that in mind as well. I much prefer picturing Hugh Dancy as Will as opposed to Edward Norton (no offense to Ed, but Hugh played the part with more pain and sadness, which I think was more akin to the feelings in the books). But, as always, Hannibal to me will forever and always be Sir Anthony Hopkins. No doubt.

I could hear their voices in my head as I was reading. It was awesome.It's actually made me a little weary of reading the rest of the books because I know I'll be comparing them in my head and I'm afraid the rest aren't going to even COMPARE to this one on that front, but I must press on.

Going inside the mind of a serial killer, even a fictitious one, is a difficult thing to do, but Harris does it so simply. Everything he wrote down is something that I can believe goes through the mind of someone who might be inclined to do something destructive like that. I really admire his writing style because it is neither complicated nor simple. It gets the point across very well, but without bogging it down with technical jargon or long, drawn out descriptions. You see from the eyes of the killer, but also from the eyes of the people witnessing the after effects of the killing.

I can't wait for the rest of them.

2014 Reading: William Shakespeare's Star Wars

He turned... the womp rat story... into the St. Crispin's Day speech...





I'm gonna go ahead and say that again in case you didn't hear me.



HE TURNED...

...THE WOMP RAT STORY...

... INTO THE ST. CRISPIN'S DAY SPEECH...

I don't...

How...

What...

2014 Reading: Down A Dark Hall

I think this is going to be my last Lois Duncan book for a while. I have too much other stuff to read. Plus, they are so short, I kinda want to space them out a bit so I don't read them all at once. Three at a time is enough, right?

Typical ghost story, I guess. I'll tell you, though, if I noticed some of the things that the main character was noticing, I sure as fuck would not have waited as long as she did to confront someone about them. Fuck that noise. I would have been the one demanding answers and then finding a way to climb over the fences to get to a phone.

In many ways, I like the way this book left off: abruptly but with hope for the outcome of the characters, but another part of me wanted to see her confront her parents in "HA! I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!" way. Also to see what ever became of her and the quote-unquote romantic interest in the story. Sure he was part of the evil scheme from the beginning, but he had no idea and I think he really cared about her. Sort of. Eventually.

Yeah, I think I'm going to move on to other things a while. These books are goo for a very short read so they get my numbers up for the year, but I'm ready again for some of the more in depth stuff. Maybe I'll start another series or something.

2014 Reading: A Gift of Magic

Should have been called "Stubborn 12-year-old Brat Selfishly Tries To Ruin Everyone's Lives With Her Weird Psychic Powers."

Seriously.

Throughout the entire book, I wanted to smack this little girl in the face. I understand that to some extent, a person of such a young age can be somewhat emotionally unstable, especially in the face of divorce and big life changes, but come on! This girl was a nightmare. She thought of nothing but her own happiness and actively tried to ruin the lives of her family just so that she could have them all to herself with no one else to interfere.

And can we talk for one second about the poor choice of covers they have for this book?

Nancy, the psycho main character of this book is LITERALLY described:

"Her wheat-colored hair hung straight 

down her back, and her brows and mouth were 

straight lines across her face with her nose a 

straight line down its center. She was twelve 

years old, but her body was still as thin as an 

arrow." (p 4)

Now keep that in mind as you look at this picture:

No.

Who was in charge of this? 

You had ONE JOB!

2014 Reading: They Never Came Home

This book was really odd. The concept is a familiar one: boy gets in trouble with the law (smuggling "dope" across the Mexican border), decides to leave and never come back, takes money, runs away, but then for some reason decides to take his friend with them... What? He pushed him down a mountain or something and tells him they're brothers when he wakes up with amnesia.

...

Riiiigggghhhhhtttt...

It's like the plot of a really bad telenovela.

But of course, in books like these, everything ends alright. The guy with amnesia's girlfriend find out he's alive and YAY happily ever after and stuff.

So much of this book was kind of odd for me to grasp. Maybe I just didn't like the fact that the girl was placing so much of her life on the guy (something that I have done in the past and have since learned to abhor now that I know what it does to people) that she just decides to stop her life when he goes missing and they think she's dead.

Maybe it's the character of Frank who is CLEARLY a sociopath. He seems to have no emotion and seems to not identify with anyone in his life and was even willing to kill "his best friend" in order to leave everything behind, not caring about his family or anything else he was leaving behind.

Maybe it was the fact that at the end of the book, you never hear what happened to Frank, the little brother who helped the girl find out what really happened to the missing boys. I came to feel strongly for Frank while I was reading and then by the end of it, I was left with nothing. NOTHING.

What happened to you, Frank? Dan and Joan, what did you tell people when you got home and everyone found out you were still alive? Dan, how did you explain you coming back but not Larry, who, by the way, is DEAD now?

You can't leave me like this, damnit! I need to know!