Lucas Blogs About Books

Ah, yes, once again the inOpportune cOntent rePlacement proceSs rears it's ugly head. Yeah, I've been working on a few home improvement projects for the last couple of weeks, so there's nothing ready for today. On the plus side, my room will look a lot nicer. So, what kind of stuff are you working on? Oh, we're putting new floors in my room. So I used that as an excuse to get rid of my old IKEA desk and replace it with a new, more compact IKEA desk. So there's that. Also, I was able to go through my old possessions and figure out which ones I could get rid of. So, between this and  the Purge , you're certainly disposing of a lot of stuff. I am. It feels good. I'm sure that once I move all the furniture back into my room it will turn out to not actually be as dramatic a change. Any other reasons you're procrastinating on the blog? Well, there was the hour-long Steven Universe special on Monday night. It was pretty epic. Ugh. You've go...

That's neat house mask. So, you've finally read The Haunting of Hill House , eh? Jumping on the Netflix bandwagon? No, but I do plan to watch the show, I have an idea for a new feature. Also, trend-surfing and what not. Okay, so, what's this book's deal? So, The Haunting of Hill House  is a well-known (and oft-adapted) 1959 horror novel by Shirley Jackson. If you've ever attended a public high school in America, you may be familiar with her short story "The Lottery." In any case, Triple H– Hold up, we are not abbreviating this as "Triple H." Fine, this novel begins with Doctor John Montague, an anthropologist who longs to make para-normal research into a valid and respected area of academic inquiry. To that end, he has rented Hill House, a famously haunted victorian mansion that was built by a man named Hugh Crain, and has invited three people to participate in his study (well, the three people who have actually showed up): Eleanor...

My feverish pursuit of MOAR content brought forth this feature: Simplified Series. Here's the pitch: quick synopses (I'll try and keep them spoiler-free-ish, but, you know, most of these are past the statute of limitations on spoilers) of the entries in a series followed by the reasons you should or shouldn't read it. This week: The Where's Waldo Tetralogy by Martin Handford Background Info: So, my research on Wikipedia  tells me that the Where's Waldo books were created by an English illustrator named Martin Handford. Also, that in England, Waldo is named Wally. Also, this is actually a heptalogy, but I only had the first four books when I was a kid, so that's all there is, damnit! So, these aren't books that you read so much, they're fun activity books for kids about finding the eponymous Waldo in a series of increasingly busy illustrations. The books become more difficult as they progress, with less and less of Waldo visible and additional cha...

SPOILER ALERT: These are the books discussed in today's post. Okay, you're definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel. Whoa, Hypothetical Reader, don't be a buzzkill before we even get started. Let me say that I am skeptical of the ability of Setting to sustain a reader's interest in a work of fiction. Don't underestimate the power of good world-building. Wait, we're only talking about made-up places? No, let's stipulate that even if the Setting is a real place, a writer still needs to make their fictional version feel real to the reader. I agree. Good, so let's talk about some books with a strong sense of place! Hmm, so we're going to talk about some assigned reading type book? But this time it's one where the setting is like another character or something cheese-y like that? We are. It's actually a book that was the only assigned book in my Senior Thesis class at UC Santa Cruz.* You went to UC Santa Cruz? Yes. ...

Are you referring to the horror franchise ? No. Bulimia nervosa? No. The Great Purge? No. Purging books from your bookshelves. Hmm, you know that there aren't really a lot of positive connotations for the word "purge," right? I guess there aren't, but I've been calling it the purse for a few years now. Okay, so I used to believe that it wasn't possible to have too many books. Ah yes, you believed the correct thing. No, you see, I'm leading up to the fact that you can, in fact, have too many books. False! If you've run out of space for books you can stack them two layers deep on your bookshelves. I did that. And then you pile more books up on top of those books. I also did that. And then you buy more bookcases. Yes. And then you stack up extra books on the floor until you can figure out where to put them. So, yeah, you can hoard books until they take up every cubic inch of your home. Bu...

Hey, some doofus has his hand covering part of the author's name. So, are you going to make any kind of New Year's resolution? Nope. Besides, wasn't Thursday the time to ask about that? I don't usually show up in  Simplified Series . No, I suppose you don't. So, what's this book's deal? Well, had you appeared in last Thursday's post , you'd know that A Breach in the Heavens is the conclusion of N.S. Dolkart's Godserfs trilogy. Godserfs? Oh, that's what the elves call humans. You see, the elves were like humanity's rebellious older siblings who were banished to another dimension because they wouldn't worship the gods. So, humanity is like the goody-two-shoes younger sibling? Yeah. Anyway, this is the first time I've reviewed a non-first entry in a series on this blog so, I'm not sure how to handle the dreaded SPOILERS . Well, why not just say that you pretty much have to spoil the first two books to dis...

Ch-ch-ch-changes! But seriously, these images all show roughly the same geographic spot. Obviously at different times and from different angles given the differences in the mountains in the background, and . . . I'm over-explaining. My feverish pursuit of MOAR content brought forth this feature: Simplified Series. Here's the pitch: quick synopses (I'll try and keep them spoiler-free-ish, but, you know, most of these are past the statute of limitations on spoilers) of the entries in a series followed by the reasons you should or shouldn't read it. This week: The Godserfs Trilogy by N.S. Dolkart Since this series just finished publishi ng last year, I want to be clear, there are definitely SPOILERS ahead. Background Info: So, this is a fantasy trilogy I've been reading for the last three years. Wait, that makes it sound like it's taken me three years to read it. It's a fantasy trilogy in which a book has been published and then read by me in each of t...