Reviews

This was an interesting read for me; I’ve long been a fan of the movie, which is a delight, and I was curious how the book measured up. I’m sorry to say, I honestly do enjoy the film more. That’s never happened to me before. I’ve enjoyed the book and film version equally, and seen them as different beasts (e.g. Fight Club , The Princess Bride , most TV adaptations of detective series...) and I’ve certainly had much-beloved books whose movie versions horrified me (e.g. The Hobbit ; who decided there should be 3 installments and none of them good?!). But I’ve never before preferred the film’s ending to the book’s ending, and that’s exactly what happened with Stardust . As a reader and a writer, I can understand why that happened. The film script was actually written by Gaiman himself, and he certainly played with the difference in medium like an expert! What it boils down to is, the film version is always fast, always adventurous, and the characters are defined (along with your opin...

I got this school year rolling with a thin, sweet, and incredibly moving piece. Rainbow Rowell, author of Fangirl , Carry On , and other fantastic books about modern geekhood and emotions, has outdone herself with this 62-page novelette, written for World Book Day 2017. I never knew I could feel so many feels after knowing the characters for such a small amount of time. Kindred Spirits is about Elena, a Star Wars superfan who decides she ought to celebrate The Force Awakens ' release by camping in line at the theater. She's seen pictures and read accounts of how people filled block after block when the previous films came out, and so even though it's winter in Omaha, she's sure she'll find a community of peers who care just as much as she does for Luke, Leia, Han, and their galaxy far away. Instead she finds she's one of only 3 people willing to line up in advance... but Star Wars means so much to her that she stays anyway and has a truly unique experience, ge...

I didn't get to read quite as much as I wanted over the summer, but I did finish a few books that I really enjoyed. They were a mix of fiction and nonfiction, which is pretty common for me. Favorite genres include but are definitely not limited to fantasy, history, sci-fi, mystery, science, and language/linguistics. I had the chance to enjoy a completely new world this summer: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor is a short but vivid science fiction novel by a Nigerian American author. I'm always delighted to find fiction that steps outside of the traditional, Euro-centric model we tend to get in English-language books, and Binti is refreshing in that sense. The main character, a brilliant but somewhat naive young woman, comes from a culture influenced by Okorafor's own Igbo heritage. But the main reason I love this book is it brings a sense of day-to-day reality to a fantastic setting. The opening scene, where our protagonist sweeps sand out of an old, unreliable but still-functi...