Recent Reads

133. Origin (Robert Langdon #5)
"Historically, the most dangerous men on earth were men of God ... especially when their gods became threatened."

I've been reading some fairly dense stuff lately and was in the mood for a fast paced thriller, so when this popped up at my library I started it immediately.

It starts off really well, but to quote a New Yorker cartoon by Ellis Rosen: "The problem is that there's no engine. Just a mysterious plot device."

That essentially sums up my thoughts on this, the fifth, Robert Langdon installment. Brown always has interesting themes to explore, and I get hooked on the premise. In this case: "Where do we come from? Where are we going?"

Sounds awesome right? The science and the descriptions of locations in Spain are indeed really great, but the the writing is mediocre, the characters actually boring, and I saw the twist coming fairly early on. Typical boiler plate Dan Brown at this point. I wish this was a multimedia book so I could watch Edmond Kirsch's presentation - that's the part I found fascinating.

I'm currently reading Homo Deus, which covers similar material, but in a five star manner and I'd highly recommend it. I much preferred Brown's earlier books, but the power of this one might well be that people who would otherwise never get exposed to the themes explored here will read it because it is a Dan Brown book. It's a fast read, and I was done with the almost 500 pages in a day. Rating: 2 stars.

134. The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits
Movies and magazines would have you think that there is only standard of beauty for women, namely skinny and white. Since the majority of the women on this planet do not meet this standard, why does this model continue to to sell? Add that to the long list of things I don't understand.

This is book is a photo essay. It's a collection of photographs of women from various parts of the world, and it made me smile. Homo Sapiens is one species and a single race, but oh the diverse ways we adapted to our environs is indeed a thing of beauty. I had not heard about the popular blog that this collection draws from and plan to take a look see. My only complaint is that while many of the photos are luminous, the text is subpar at best. Nature is beautiful, and this book is a wonderful meditation on just that. Rating: 4 stars.

135. Providence Act 1 (Providence #1-4)
The works of Alan Moore are hit or miss for me, and this one is a miss. I think this is partly my fault, as I don't know or understand the works/memes it's paying homage to or building upon, so it's probably just me. There are some cool aspects to this comic series. I quite liked some sections of the story and the art is good throughout. However, I really did not like the stories within stories in this one. While I'm usually a fan of journals, in this case, the journal pages were in a font that I found hard to read, and I found the pamphlets annoying, so I lost steam there. The horror aspect was interesting, the art creepily good, but I didn't like it enough to continue with the series. Rating: 2 stars.

136. Garbage Night (Vacancy #2)
2.5 stars.

This graphic novel tells the tale of a dog, Simon, and his best friends, a raccoon and a deer. Something has happened to all the humans, and domesticated animals and animals that depend on human scraps have the toughest time of it. This volume contains two stories, and I'd suggest going to the end and reading how the trio meets before reading the main story.

I quite liked the art and the depiction of these anthropomorphic animals in their tattered human clothing. The colors make the illustrations pop. The main story however seemed to lack something and seemed unfinished. I did like how themes of friendship and bullying were handled, but the plot wasn't compelling enough for me. This is written for kids, so it might work much better for that audience. Rating: 2 stars.