Category Archives: book review

book review, compromise, fashion, marriage, singing

Failure To Be Asked and Compromise – What a Mix

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This weeks topics:

1.) Ask someone who loves you what one of your weaknesses is.
(inspired by Summer from Le Musings Of Moi)

2.) “I need all the help I can get and if repeating something healthy and inspiring to myself several times a day helps, then I’m going to do it!” -What affirmation makes you feel better? WELL THINK OF ONE.
(inspired by Shanna from Smiles, Miles, and Trials)

3.) I Wanna Be MADE! You remember the MTV series where nerdy high school kids are made to be popular and what not? If you could be MADE into anything…what you be made into?

4.) I’m reading a book about dogs and kids…it says you may need to compromise some of your dog standards when choosing a dog that will fit every family member’s needs. I think that’s like marriage. What did you compromise when you married?

5.) Why didn’t they ask you? Write a list of 5 or 10 sentences that begin with the words ‘No one ever asked me’; then, write about one of them in detail, or use them all in a poem, or use several in a personal description of yourself.
(writingfix.com)

I’m going to go with #4 and #5 this week.

#4 – What did you compromise when you married?

I like to listen to music, preferably loud, as I drift off to sleep. L on the other hand is one of those people who requires near absolute silence to fall asleep. (Once asleep, she is impervious to most noises). You can see where this is going. It was one of the bigger compromises of married life for me to accept the no-noise-of-any-sort-at-bedtime rule.

Even now, more than 34 years later, I still miss listening to music at bedtime. There is something so soothing about listening to Led Zeppelin or Pure Prairie League as you drift off to the land of nod. Any Jackson Browne ballad acts as a soporific for me. Just about any tune to stop the continuous running of the brain is a great sleep aid for me. Call it the primitive power of music if you will.

Now it is an entirely different battle for silence at night. The combination of L, Molly (the dog), and me snoring is enough to wake the dead. There is nothing worse than waking up in annoyance at someone snoring only to realize that the snorer is you. Add into it the occasional bursts of night time flatulence from Molly and you can truly enjoy a premier sleeping experience at our house.

Maybe I can convince L to let me listen to music just to drown out the snores at night? It’s worth a try! (Of course, it won’t do anything to the olfactory effects from the dog, but as they say: half a loaf is better than none. Maybe Bizarro got it right in reverse.)

#5 – No one ever asked me

No one ever asked me …

… to be the centerfold in their magazine.
… to be the cap-person on their human pyramid.
… to join their ballet company.
… to serve as their fashion consultant.
… to run the anchor leg of the race.
… what I wash first in the shower.
… if I have ever crawled through a window.
… to retrieve something fallen into a narrow crevice.
… to sing for them.

We can eliminate the interest of some of these right off the bat. Regular readers already know why no one asks me to sing. (The curious might want to read this entry.)

Retrieving things from a small area is out for the simple reason that my hands are large. “How large?”, I hear you ask. Well …

I have never been asked if I have crawled through a window because unless it is a patio door, it isn’t going to happen. I have been asked numerous times to hoist someone up to the window – does that count?

I wash my head first in the shower, then the body, and then finally shampoo the hair (what there is left of it). Just seems like the logical way to go. I almost always shower rather than use a bathtub. Might have been too much exposure to the humor of my dad’s railroad work colleagues when young. They were fond of asking the semi-rhetorical question “Why would I want to wash my head in the same water as my @**?”

The rest of the failures can be traced to one simple fact: I am a really big klutz. When you are 6’5″ and 300lbs, you get asked to play football and rugby, not dance on stage or pose for the centerfold. {*grin*} And when you wear size 16 shoes, your ballet career is over before it even began. Likewise, unless it is a strongman competition, you are not going to be asked to tread and kneel atop anyone.

Finally, I am noted more for my sense of anti-fashion rather than fashion. After all, I have been seen in public wearing these:

I think that explains it all!

P.S. If you have ever wondered how those review blurbs for new books come about, venture on over to Eos Books – The Next Chapter and see how my review of BRAINS yesterday was blurb-a-tized. I have never seen so many ellipses in my life. {*grin*}

book review, brains, zombie

And Now For Something Completely Different

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A while back I won a pre-press proof copy of Robin Becker’s “Brains – a zombie memoir”. The coveted copy arrived and I sat down ready for a good read. Now that I have read, you get to listen to my meandering review. {*grin*}

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect since this is Ms. Becker’s first novel, not to mention one of the few zombie novels I’ve read. After all, it is difficult to picture a moldering decaying zombie fixated on eating brains as a sympathetic protagonist. I did indeed find the first few chapters an unenthusiastic read. But then I began to care about the trials and tribulations of Jack, the lead zombie. That was all it took to have me hooked.

The storyline is simple. An experimental vaccine developed by a scientist (Dr. Stein) for the military is somehow released into the wild before the “bugs” have been worked out and spreads a viral wave of zombie-ism throughout the world. We are introduced to the chaos via the narrative of Jack, a former college professor turned zombie (who just so happens to have eaten his wife early in the saga). Jack is a rarity for a zombie – he retains the ability to think. He also has a really sarcastic and snarky world view that only gets more pronounced once he turns zombie. Since he retains the ability to think, he keeps a written diary of his journey through zombieland – the very story we are reading.

As Jack navigates the battle between human and zombie and his insatiable need to eat brains, he collects a raggedy crew of exceptional zombies that have retained various skills not found in the garden variety zombie. Ros has retained the ability to speak, Guts has retained the ability to move at something other than the zombie shuffle in spite of the fact that his guts are duct taped in, Joan who has retained a deep sense of compassion for her fellow zombies and skill with a mending kit to keep them put together, Annie who has retained the ability to shoot a gun with accuraccy, and others. Along the way, Jack adopts a lady that had been pregnant when she was turned into a zombie, thus introducing the first zombie pregnancy and birth to the zombie clan. (The new born Issac serves as the symbol of hope to the gang.)

The story then becomes one of survival as the remaining humans work hard at eradicating the zombie hordes. (It seems that being shot in the head is fatal to zombies.) Along the way, the Jack’s goal mutates from simple survival to a quest for equality as the human and zombie populations shrink in the post-apocalyptic world.

Surprisingly, the story becomes more compelling as we become familiar with the band and all their foibles. The twist of allowing some zombies to retain various abilities like speech and normal ambulation serves well as a metaphor for the stuggles of the the differently abled amidst us. I was sucked into caring about the developing characters – a mark of good writing. The denouement is a blood bath, both of the zombie crew and Dr. Stein and humans. As the survivors sail off to a brave new world, I was tempted to throw the book across the room. It left so many questions unanswered.

Beyond the plot and character development, I loved all the literary allusions. The mad scientist named Dr. Stein? The alpha leader named Jack? The sharp shooter named Annie? Ms. Becker’s roots as a professor of English and writing have served her well. I also liked the rather cynical view of academia presented by Jack in his reminisces about his life in the pre-zombie state. They ring true to a reprobate like me.

This is an amusing and gripping read, especially the latter half. What keeps me from calling it a great read is the inconsistency of the zombie-ism presented. Zombies are driven to eat (brains), but they do not self repair and continue to fall apart. Thus we have a logical contradiction between the denouement of the novel and the fact that given enough time, zombies as presented here will simply rot and fall apart. It also made the birth of Issac a real contradiction in terms. How does a baby that does not grow older and is rotting grow up to be a symbol of hope?

Fair warning – like most zombie tales, this one is full of blood and gore luridly described. If that bothers you, you may not want to read this book.