Lauren Hillenbrand
Wow! The story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner in the 30's from Southern California who ends up in the pacific theater of WWII as a bombardier and as a POW in Japan. The story covers his pre-war life, his journey adrift in the Pacific for a couple months (yes, a couple), eventual capture and two years in POW camp, and finally his life after camp. Every component of his life is astounding and so crazy that you think it is made up. Hillenbrand does an excellent job of providing the details needed to visualize the craziness of every situation, as well as to suggest the calm & matter-of-fact nature of how Zamperini deals with what is thrown at him. I particularly appreciate that the book doesn't end with rescue, but lets us know about the difficulties and successes of life after POW. Zamperini is a particularly charismatic subject to highlight this part of WWII, but I think he is in many ways just a common soldier who survived.
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Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Railsea
China Mieville
Mieville creates an astounding world. Take every idea that you can imagine related to an ocean based society, with ships, islands, pirates, salvage, navies, and creatures of the deep. Now instead of water, this entire world is built on an intricate tangle of rail lines, with switches & junctions, different gauge lines and everything you can imagine related to trains. Crazy. I love how Mieville imagines and develops, actually pulling you into the world by keeping you curious about how the world works. His language causes the reader to visualize strangeness in a way that is clearly not physical reality, but is believable in an imagination. As such, I don't think this could ever be a movie. Or at least, a good movie. It requires the mind to do most of the work. Beyond developing this world, however, the story here is pretty standard and not very engaging. I would read this book for the world. The story was just good enough.
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Mieville creates an astounding world. Take every idea that you can imagine related to an ocean based society, with ships, islands, pirates, salvage, navies, and creatures of the deep. Now instead of water, this entire world is built on an intricate tangle of rail lines, with switches & junctions, different gauge lines and everything you can imagine related to trains. Crazy. I love how Mieville imagines and develops, actually pulling you into the world by keeping you curious about how the world works. His language causes the reader to visualize strangeness in a way that is clearly not physical reality, but is believable in an imagination. As such, I don't think this could ever be a movie. Or at least, a good movie. It requires the mind to do most of the work. Beyond developing this world, however, the story here is pretty standard and not very engaging. I would read this book for the world. The story was just good enough.
Read
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