Kurt Anderson (1)

Easily 150 pages longer than it should have been. This book is called Devour, so most of the time, the focus should be on the monster...that's trying to...devour.

Instead, we get endless pages of set-up and narration of an illegal (and frankly, stupid) card game and its two players. We get to know far too many characters, including the unlikable Frankie, who set up the stupid card game, the ship's captain, the bartender, the other, smaller ship's captain, the waitress, the unloved little adopted girl... we get to know all their innermost—and mostly banal—thoughts, hopes, dreams, and their past. We also get to watch virtually every single one of them make the stupidest decisions possible. I can't even go into them all here, because it's simply not worth it, but trust me, you'll understand if you're unlucky enough to read this book.

We're also treated to some incredibly awful thoughts from the attacking creature as well.

In between, we get the odd, reasonably well written scenes of monster attacks.

This is obviously a book by an author more interested in writing a high stakes character driven novel about mostly unlikable people either directly or indirectly involved in a card game, then bolted on a Jaws-like plot to up the stakes.

Along the way, it's also obvious he doesn't know how to ultimately have his hero defeat the big bad, so he basically relies on luck and limps it to the end.

Not the worst I've read, but not even close to the best.… (mais)

How to Back Up A Trailer is a collection of Manly Advice for Men. Sportsball, beer, motor oil, and other things that certain men like. I picked this book up at the store for a few reasons. First off, I am a sucker for books that tell you how to do things properly. Secondly, the book was cheap. Thirdly, they had a successful marketing ploy of putting it at the front of the store where you can easily find it.

The book is pretty good. It is filled with great advice like how to operate a stick shift/ manual transmission in a vehicle, how to start a fire in terrible weather. Thrown in the mix are gems like how to build a potato gun, how to get out of a speeding ticket, and so on. It talks about the rules of Poker and Blackjack, which are somewhat complicated games. Some of the advice is completely pointless to me. Take advice on smoking a cigar, this is something I can not see myself doing. The same goes for a lot of golf advice. It isn’t like I am proud of it, but I will probably never be able to drive a manual transmission. I just can’t see myself buying a car with that feature.

The main content of the book is delivered in text. Sprinkled in the book are little pictures of things that the advice talks about. For instance, when it talks about doing things with your vehicle, there are little images that show things like solenoids and where the spark plugs would be. The book contains six major sections with advice in each split into tiny essays. So it covers General Automotive things, Sports, Social Events, Home and Garage Repair, Outdoor things, and Cooking.… (mais)

** I received a copy of this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway. **

Fun mash-up of thriller and giant monster genres. You don't 'see' much of the monster but this just makes the monster more monstrous and scary. The suspense built slowly throughout the book but the story never dragged so the build-up worked. I would have liked to see more from the monster's point of view and more description of the monster but the human characters were very well-drawn and the book was a fun and energizing read!… (mais)