Fantasy Media in the Classroom, ed. Emily Dial-Driver

2012 Book 107: Fantasy Media in the Classroom, ed. Emily Dial-Driver (7/12/2012)

Categories: Other

Reason for Reading: Early Reviewer’s Book.

My Review 4/5 stars
Fantasy Media in the Classroom is a collection of essays which describe why fantasy media and popular culture are useful in the classroom. For instance students can learn the same techniques using popular fiction as they can with an old-school class, but they feel more confident in their analyses because they already feel like they are experts on popular culture. These lessons and confidence can then be extrapolated on to classical literature. Fantasy Media in the Classroom also gives examples of how popular culture can be used to design lessons. This book was written mostly from the perspective of teaching college students, but a few essays talk about high school students. It’s possible these lessons could also be changed a bit and used for younger students, as well. I think this book would be useful to teachers, even if they don’t plan on fully incorporating popular culture in their classrooms, because it may help them to see the benefit of popular culture references their students make during class…and how such references could be embraced as an interesting interpretation rather than brushed off. I am not a teacher, but I found this book interesting because it helped me to better understand what fantasy media says about psychology/sociology/politics.

Insurgent, by Veronica Roth

2012 Book 83: Insurgent, by Veronica Roth (6/7/2012)

Reason for Reading: Second book in the Divergent trilogy

My Review 4.5/5 stars
The second book in the Divergent trilogy picks up almost immediately after the end of the first book. Tris explores the boundaries of friendship and betrayal as she fights to reestablish balance in her torn-up world. Like Divergent, Insurgent isn’t JUST an exciting dystopic novel with unique world-building and enticing protagonists, it is also a deeper book which will make the reader see areas of grey the in the choices the characters make. It’s a suspenseful, fun, and thoughtful book. I definitely recommend it to anyone who reads dystopic YA lit.

Divergent, by Veronica Roth

2012 Book 82: Divergent, by Veronica Roth (6/2/2012)

Reason for Reading: Curiosity

My Review 5/5 stars
The future Chicago has 5 factions of people, each representing a moral value: Amity, Dauntless, Candor, Erudite, and Abnegation. At the age of 16, Beatrice Prior and all her classmates must choose which faction to join. Beatrice struggles with the choice—does she follow her desires or does she choose to stay with her family? I was deeply impressed by this book. This isn’t ANY YA-dystopia-with-strong-female-lead. This is an amazing coming-of-age story that explores the meanings of morals, identity, and courage. Furthermore, Roth has managed to create a female lead who is strong while still leaving her human AND keeping her morals intact. Beatrice is an admirable and courageous young woman, despite her youthful identity crisis. Roth has also written a suspenseful and intriguing tale—I read the book in one sitting because I simply didn’t want to stop. The action is exciting without being gore-spittingly violent. Sure, there’s violence…there has to be for the plot to work. But Roth describes the scenes so well that people can imagine as much (or as little) gore as they wish. Gore is not inserted for its shock value. Divergent is exciting enough that all action-lovers should be thrilled, and the people who appreciate a more deeply meaningful story will be satisfied. I can’t wait to read the next!

PS FYI I’m comparing it to The Hunger Games, which I found to be tastelessly violent with a rather unlikeable main character. But that’s just me! 🙂

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

2012 Book 35: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (2/22/2012)

Reason for Reading: My friend Shweta has been telling me to read this book for quite a while. Now, my friend Alicia insisted I read it so that we can go watch the movie together.

My Review 3/5 stars
In a post-apocalyptic country called Panem, The Capital takes two children as tributes from each of its 12 Districts for an annual reality-TV survival competition. The children must fight until there is only one survivor. I understand why this book is so popular. Collins is a fantastic writer—the plot was fast-moving, suspenseful, and creative; the characters were well-developed and likable. However, I did not like this book. The idea of kids being forced to murder kids for entertainment is disturbing and tasteless as far as I’m concerned. It didn’t work for me in Lord of the Flies and it didn’t work for me in The Hunger Games. I thought about continuing with the rest of the series, but it would appear from the reviews that the next two books are just as violent, so I guess I don’t see the point. I do really appreciate that it was very exciting and well-written though. I practically read it in one sitting despite my disgust at the premise. It deserves 1-2 stars for the premise and 4-5 stars for the writing, so I gave it 3.

Physics of the Impossible, by Michio Kaku

2012 Book 27: Physics of the Impossible, by Michio Kaku (2/12/2012)

Reason for Reading: Because it was there

My Review: 3.5/5 stars
Physics of the impossible explores common themes in science fiction, and explains in simplified physics whether such things are possible soon, or far in the future. Kaku has an engaging writing style, and his physics is basic enough that most popular readers would be able to follow. However, I don’t think people who follow physics regularly would enjoy the simplified science. I enjoyed this book, though I have one major complaint: Kaku would give examples of science fiction phenomena from popular novels. Apparently assuming that everyone has read all of these books, he almost always tells the ending of the book. I hadn’t read several of these books and was quite annoyed since telling the end of the book did not add any merit to his own arguments. The book lost star-points because of this problem.

Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer

2012 Book 18: Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer (1/29/2012)

An alien lands in Toronto with hopes of studying the ROM’s fossil collection; meanwhile she provides “scientific evidence” for the existence of God. This book had a good idea with poor execution. Sawyer completely ignored the “show-don’t-tell” rule of novel-writing. The book is a clod of sci-religious dialog decorated with a thin veneer of plot. The scientific evidence consisted of debates about: 1)What are the odds? and 2) Where did altruistic behavior come from? Neither argument is fresh, but it’s interesting to have it all thrown into the mouth of an alien (who is also using facts that only the fictional aliens know to support her pro-God arguments). The second argument falls flat since cooperative behavior (i.e. “altruism” as Sawyer was defining it) has evolved in more than just humans. Also, Sawyer adds a short punt about abortion. Although I completely agree with his point of view, I don’t read novels to get a lecture on these views. SHOW-don’t-tell!!!! On the other hand, this book won the Audie award, which means it had a fantastic performance—which I enjoyed on a long car trip I just took. That made the book worth it for me. 3/5 stars