Book Smorgasbord #1

As an avid reader and a wanna-be blogger, I feel an embarrassing amount of guilt at how much I hate writing book reviews. Anyone who knows me, however, knows that I love talking about the books I read. It doesn't make sense, I know. So I am going to try a new thing where instead of telling myself that I will write a full book review for each book I read (LOL), I am going to just write a few sentences about a few that stand out and smash them all together in a single blog post now and then. Hopefully this is more interesting for anyone reading my blog and more realistic for anyone writing my blog (uh, me). We'll see how it goes.

The Circle

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in America--even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge. - Goodreads

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

"The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. "World War Z" is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years." 

 –(Goodreads)

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is unlike any book I’ve read (or in this case, listened to). I can’t say that I’ve been dragged into the zombie fad, and this book isn’t going to change that. This book does not follow the traditional arc of a novel. It truly does mimic a documentary and is nothing like the movie of the same name. If you’re looking for character growth or plot development you are probably going to be disappointed. I repeatedly had to remind myself that I was listening to an audiobook and not an episode of This American Life. It is void of special effects and soundbites, which contributed to the realistic tone. Max Brooks voices the journalist of the same name in the book and an all-star cast of actors deliver each story in the book with all of the human emotion you’d find responding to Ira Glass.

About a Boy

I've been in London for a bit over two weeks now. I find myself settling in, falling into patterns, and enjoying my new normal. For several months I've been anticipating the panic to set in, realizing the magnitude of what I am doing, and to freak out just a little. It hasn't happened yet, so I'm just going to go with it.

The KU Big Read program has punctuated my first few weeks here. Essentially, Kingston University sent every first year graduate student, staff member, and incoming freshman a copy of About a Boy by Nick Hornby (a KU alumnus). Nearly 12,000 specially printed copies were distributed with lots of social media chatter, pictures on Twitter tagged with #kubigread, and events on campus. One of my lecturers developed KU Big Read (this being the inaugural year) and, as a publishing student, we received lots of information about the program prior to arriving on campus. It was a great, natural conversation starter with my new classmates, and it encouraged me to read a book I may not have picked up otherwise.