Item 16 - Finish 30 4 books - "Packng for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void" by Mary Roach

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This is the second book by Mary Roach that I've read, the first being "Stiff". I felt that book was the stronger of the two, but this one was still engaging. Mary Roach is a funny, clever writer who always manages to talk about science-ish subjects in a fun way. I say "science-ish" because you don't really come away from these sorts of books any smarter, but you are primed for any cocktail party you might find yourself at with little factoids to drop into lulls in the conversation (this could be called the "Gladwellian school of science" if  you wanted to put a name on it.)

That may sound derisive, but I assure you it's not meant to be. I enjoyed this book and loved the little stories from her various interviews and resources. My only real problem with this particular book was the title: it makes it seem like it's going to actually be about the science of humans reaching Mars, or at least the plans to visit our second closest neighbor. That takes up a very small part of the book, mostly at the end of chapters where she will take on a couple of sentences about the subject she has just discussed and saying something to the effect of "and just imagine doing that for two years, which is how long it will take to get to Mars." This is largely due to the very nature of getting humans to Mars. It's such a theoretical proposition at this point that there is very little that can be written about it. To that end, I think that the very subject of Mars or theoretical space exploration could have been it's own chapter and the book could have just used "space" as the uniting theme.

The whole book does have a sort of unfortunate sadness about it. Now that our government has decided that manned spaceflight is far less important than invading other countries (as if there was ever any doubt about their priorities) it looks as though our role in flinging humans towards the red planet will be greatly diminished. Why should it be the United States' responsibility to stand at the forefront of science and exploration? I mean who wants to do that, right? Regardless, I sincerely hope that someone from this planet does continue funding space exploration. As Mary Roach quotes Ben Franklin in her book when he was asked what use a hot air balloon (the first human flying machine) was "What is the good of a newborn infant?" There is near limitless potential in the human animal, we just have to strive for it.

Review of "Pacific Rim" Item 2 - Watch 6 3 movies at the theater

Pacific Rim/Jaws by Matthew Ferguson, this mash up is much better than the movie

I am on a roll recently for consuming bad media. I actually had highish hopes for this movie, I didn't expect it to reinvent the wheel or anything, but I respect Guillermo del Toro and figured he had something in mind. That something ended up being every summer action movie ever. He hit every single cliche that you can think of. Impassioned eleventh hour speech by the elder statesman? Heroic sacrifice? Protagonist's rival comes to begrudgingly respect him? Generically handsome lead ends up with the only female character given more than two lines? Yup, "Pacific Rim" ticks all the boxes essential to make a boring actioner.

And it's not just the writing that puts you to sleep; Idris Elba, who is usually such a powerful actor, sleepwalks through the entire film. Charlie Day and Ron Perlman do their best to inject some sense of life into this film, but they aren't enough. It was beautifully shot and there were some great props, which is no less than should be expected of Del Toro, but it lacked the practical special effects that made "Pan's Labyrinth" so amazing and "Hellboy" so detailed. I will rescind my previous assertion that it was a bad movie, it was just a rehash of something that we should all be tired of by now.

Item 16 - Finish 30 5 books - "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi

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I bought this book because of a thread on Reddit about great first lines in books or something like that. The quotation used was interesting enough that I decided to give it a shot:


Which also makes this another instance of me buying and reading a book because of a good high-concept. Thankfully, this one worked out much better than last time.

I'm not about to heap praises on this book though. We're offered glimpses of some great premises that I'm sure will be fleshed out in the further books in the series, but I just don't feel a desire to seek those books out. There's a scene in the book where the protagonist suddenly has a breakdown on the battlefield, realizing he's been killing dozens or hundreds of alien combatants since joining the army. It's actually a moment I waited for, since the rest of the book he deals with mowing down aliens as if he were talking about his laundry. But then the scene fizzles without any real resolution, he just kind of gets over it. That kind of sums up how I felt at the end; I'll never really know much more about this series, or if the hero ever truly feels anything about his actions, but I can live with that.

Review of "Monsters University" Item 2 - Watch 6 4 movies at the theater

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At the current rate I've been seeing movies in the theater I should reach my goal by the time I'm 31, I'm definitely going to have to step up my game. I went to this one with my niece, who recently moved to town. She loved it, but she's three and not terribly picky. I liked it, but felt like it didn't have the same earnestness or heart that the original "Monsters Inc." had. I'm not really sure that there needed to be second film in the series, honestly. With this prequel we just take several giant steps back for the characters and their world without much payoff. It's a cute movie, but I'm obviously not the target here.

Item 16 - Finish 30 6 books - "Extinction Point" by Paul Antony Jones

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Oh boy. I'll just get this over with quickly; I didn't like this book. I had a lot of reasons but one of the primary ones is the protagonist, Emily. Emily is your typical reader stand-in character in that she is essentially a blank slate personality. This is even more unfortunate than you might expect since she is essentially the only "character" (and I use that word loosely here) that we are exposed to for most of the book. The one part of her personality that does make it into the plot is that she is incredibly genre blind.

It's one thing if a story never makes mention of a genre; I'm willing to accept, for instance, in "Friday the 13th" that the teens have never seen a slasher movie in their life, maybe in their universe that particular type of fiction doesn't exist and therefore it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do to split up and go into the basement by themselves. This is not the case with Emily; she explicitly states she's a fan of zombie movies and that a sci-fi movie is playing in the background at one point. And yet she persists in doing everything that you would expect someone with no experience in either subject to do: Hmmm, should I arm myself in case someone/something attacks me? NOPE! Should I find a flashlight before going exploring? Fuck that! What was that strange sound? I'll go investigate!

I think what really gets me is that I think the author is probably a good writer, but it felt like he phoned this in. So much so that nothing actually happens or is resolved by the end of the book. It ends with a non-cliffhanger cliffhanger. It's very obviously designed with  a desire to be a series in mind. You are left with a single character who you don't care about, doing something that doesn't seem to matter and no resolution to any part of it. It could have done so much more, which is it's cardinal sin.

Item 16 - Finish 30 7 books - "How to Be Black" by Baratunde Thurston

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Baratunde Thurston takes a really amazing approach to race in this book, which is appropriate for a book with such a lofty title as "How to Be Black," the amazing thing is that he aims high and he hits his target. The book is part comedy, part autobiography and part instruction manual on race relations in the United States. It is one of the better comedy books that I've read in a long time and he manages to integrate his own experience and life story pretty seamlessly into the different sections of the book. Like the best "Onion" articles, I found myself quoting it in conversation or pulling the book out and reading whole sections to helpless people.

My one complaint is that sometimes the other contributors to the book (his "panel of experts") didn't fit in quite perfectly. I assume this is due to the nature of the way they were collected (I believe they were interviews rather than written essays) or possibly an issue of editing. I want to emphasize that I actually enjoyed all of the contributors thoughts and thought they all were interesting and funny, I just felt that they were sometimes unnecessary or slightly awkward to the rest of the text.