« July, 2011 »
The Magicians: A Novel 
by Lev Grossman (2010)
read: 29 July 2011
rating: [+]
category: uncategorized
Take the teenagers go off to magic college meme from Harry Potter, add in the magical land full of talking animals reminiscent of Narnia, mix it up with a bunch of teen and recent college grad angst, and you get this wonderful book. However, these aren’t the choir boys that attend Hogwarts. These teenage magicians drink, do drugs, smoke, have sex, and all the other teenage / early 20s proclivities, so it’s probably not a book to suggest to your 12 year old Harry Potter fanatic. But you and you older teen kids will definitely want to read it.
Spin 
by Robert Charles Wilson (2006)
read: 21 July 2011
rating: [+]
category: scifi & fantasy
An unique take on the apocalyptic earth story, with an interesting dichotomy between the characters that dive into the science to understand what has happened to the earth, and those that retreat into religion. I also liked the converging time line, with the first person story being told both in current events, and looking back, with the time lines converging at the end of the book. Although it is a science fiction book, it’s not really a science fiction story. The story is more about relationships and how people react to the cataclysmic event.
Jetpack Dreams: One Man’s Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention That Never
by Mac Montandon (2008)
read: 21 July 2011
rating: [0]
category: non-fiction
One man’s quest to answer the question, where the hell are those jetpacks that the future promised us? The answer, unfortunately, is far, far away, but we get to meet an oddball assortment of dreamers along the way that refuse to wait on the future.
The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood
by Jane Leavy (2010)
read: 3 July 2011
rating: [+]
categories: non-fiction, sports
Mantle was a lousy husband, crappy father, and perpetually injured throughout his career. Who knows what kind of numbers he would have put up if he had been healthy. I’m too young to have grown up watching him, so he was always just one of those old timers to me, and one who played for the wrong team :) Knowing how screwed up he really was doesn’t really help me. In fact, I’m not sure I’m really happy about knowing. Maybe I should have just let old legends lie.
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