Lev Grossman, The Magicians

The magicians was a really great and fun take on the whole magic genre in away that harry potter never went. It really made magic feel more down to earth and something that was real rather then in this magic world but kids and people dealing with real life things and situation that teen go through with a magic twist but never in away that makes it seem fake. It also made magic seem similar to art school which we talked about in class and it makes a lot of sense because not everyone can create art that is able to manipulate and make you think and that it is a skill that you have to practice hard and even if you try your hardest you may never master. Also the in the magicians it has something similar to are art school the no smoking law though I am not a smoker it gave me a laugh. In all I sound this book really wonderful and fun to read though its not harry potter it stands on its own and if someone doesn’t like harry potter they may like the magicians 

Read J.R.R. Tolkien, The Annotated Hobbit

The Annotated Hobbit its been awhile since have read this book so I thought I would give it a reread to see if it was what I remembered but instead of reading the annotated hobbit in print I opted for the ipad version which adds images and also text read by J.R.R Tolkien. To be completely honesty when I first read the hobbit it wasn’t my favorite book back in high school and I found it quite boring for my taste and slow. But every time Tolkien read it had a rhythm and life and was less boring then when I was just reading it by myself and I truly enjoyed the story and it really had to do with I guess the inflections in his voice that for some reason I could not do as well in my head. And it made me wish I would have gotten the audio book version then just the ipad version with a few talking paragraph points. But it was nice to have that feature and without It I wouldn’t have liked the story as much. In the end I was happy I reread the hobbit and did in the end enjoy it more then the first time I read it some years ago though it is still not one of my favorite books I have a new respect for it.

stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn

Stories and studies of strange things by lafcadio hearn was a really interesting collection of what the title says strange stories of mostly ghost and monsters in japan. I found these stories to be really interesting because they aren’t like western ghost stories but of ghost who doesn’t live in another world but in are world and that are still living. These stories kind of blur the line because spirits are and myths are all intertwined in Japanese culture looking at one of the first stories where the man is about to get his head cut of by the samurai and tells all the men around his cussed soul will haunt them all horribly when he passes but the samurai tells him to try and bite the stone to show that the sprit will come back and the man did all the people around where horrified that the sprit would come to get them but it never came but just the shear though of it maybe coming to life horrified them to the point where they thought it was true it shows how engrained it is into there mind.

Monster Island

Monster Island was something I did not think I would have been into I am not normally a fan of zombie books. But the more I read the more I enjoyed this online blog style of a book. I really enjoyed its take on with Gary the only thinking zombie which is something I have really yet to see in most zombie movies or reading also that the zombies are all connected like when he told the fat trucker zombie to go die and the zombie went and died I found that interesting and I also thought it was funny that the zombie fighting him for the meat was a pretty stereo typical zombie the trucker/redneck zombie. Also I thought it was weird with the girl war lords who are basically the only group that seems to be maintaining there own laws in this lawless time and they are all very young and dressed like school girls and I don’t know it just was odd to me I get extremist groups using young children but the whole school girl outfitters was a little weird but I am happy the story didn’t go into a sexual way with that. Also I took a look at night of the living dead which I thought was wonderful and still a zombie movie today that holds up though some of the acting is not the greatest the lead African American actor really steal the movie for me and really adds a lot of depth and in parts really makes the other actors horrible acting better. In comparison reading a book about zombies and seeing them In a movie normally a movie wins for me but Monster Island is a book I think that can stand on its own against movie like night of the living dead because it gives you detail it gives you suspense in a medium that is hard to with zombies.