Lecture notes

The fault in our stars by John Green

First of all, I got a blue colored signature.

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Virals&Seizure by Kathy Reichs

 Virals is the first young adult novel Kathy Reichs has written. I’m not 100% certain, but I think it was in collaboration with her son, Brendan Reichs (what I do know for sure, is that she thanks him in the acknowledgments). Seizure is its sequel, and from the way it ended, I’m fairly certain we will see more books in this universe…who knows, maybe this is the beginning of another 10+ books saga. I, for one, certainly hope so.

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Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds quite possibly wrote one of my favorite sci-fi books of all time: Century Rain. Now, when I bought that one, I picked up Pushing Ice first, and I don’t know what made me decide between the two, but Pushing Ice lost, and I read it just recently.

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The Hunger Games trylogy by Suzanne Collins

So I started the first book because I had an exam the next morning, and I couldn’t sleep. Figured half an hour of reading would make me sleepy. It didn’t. I wound up finishing the first book at 6:30 am, and immediately starting the second.

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Tempe Brennan novels by Kathy Reichs

I have to say, I loved reading the Tempe Brennan series. There’s fourteen books in total, with the fifteenth on it’s way, so it promised to keep me satisfied for a while. Reading consistently, I might have plowed through them in about three weeks, reading a book in one day and a half, considering I had to go to school.

Now, as much as I loved the Temperance Brennan from the TV-show “Bones”, the Tempe from the books is real in a way the TV-show character could never be. For those of you who don’t know, the show “Bones” is loosely based on Kathy Reichs’ novels. Now, the author is a producer for the show, advising them mostly on the science, so you just might learn something from watching it, and the only times you might look at the screen and think “Come on! Is this real?”  is when one of the characters claims she built a supercomputer able to render 3D imagery of victims and cause of death…in her spare time. Which Angela Montenegro does in the pilot! What I am trying to get at, here, is that the TV-show characters are like all other in the genre: super hot, super geniuses that mostly just make regular people feel stupid in comparison.

The book is not like that. Tempe Brennan doesn’t have three doctorates, she has one. And while she regularly consults with experts in various fields, I don’t think they have multiple PhD’s, either. The science in the books is always splendidly explained, and I have to say I learned a thing or two about mitochondrial DNA and carbon dating in my lecture.

I’m not 100% sure, but I think about 10 years pass between the first book and the last one. It took just a little bit longer than that for all of them to be published, but the series has a wonderful sense of continualness, and it made reading the books one after another really nice. As in, the moment you finished one, you just HAD to start on the next one. 

I said earlier that Tempe is real in a way Bones could never be (and when I say Bones, I’m referring to the Temperance Brennan from the show). That sense mainly comes from Tempe’s interaction with other characters. Tempe has a problem with some people, most notably detective Luc Claudel and detective Skinny Slidell. Now, these two guys are from different countries, don’t resemble each other personality-wise and are at completely different ends of the spectrum physically. But they both underestimate Tempe time and again, and have the habit of annoying her as well as being irritated by her presence. Now, Skinny has come to rely on Tempe, and he’s actually taking her everywhere while they are on a case, but my point is that when Tempe doesn’t like someone, you know it. And it’s not just because the narrative is in first person. She’s also funny, and sarcastic, and smart, but modest. She had great values, and she’s an overall consistent character. To make matters even better, she also has flaws. She’s an alcoholic, already sober in the first book, but it’s always mentioned whenever there’s alcohol around. And she can also be impatient, one of the books dealing with that in depth, Tempe being put in a very dangerous situation which she realizes could have been avoided, had she been more…welcoming. I’ll leave it at that, because I don’t want to spoil anyone.

The second most notable character is lieutenant detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe’s main love interest. Even though he’s not presented as such the fist time you meet him, and it takes them a while to get there, Ryan is one of those characters you should look out for. I suspected Tempe would have a big time love interest the moment I started reading the first book, but I didn’t think it would be Ryan. And I was kind of scared, because the person I thought it would be would’ve meant a hate-love relationship.

Also, on the note of love interests, Ryan isn’t the only guy Tempe finds attractive. And he’s not always a major part of the plot. In the last book (much to my disappointment) he’s barely even mentioned, and, at most, he and Tempe have a brief phone conversation.

The books take place in different places. Mostly there are cases either in Montreal or Charlotte, where Tempe is the forensic anthropologist. In one of the books she goes to Guatemala, in another she makes a trip to Israel. There’s one book that takes place mostly in Hawaii, and I answered my phone with “Aloha!” a few days in a row. Because Kathy Reichs bases most of her books on experiences she’s had in real life, these places really come alive in her novels. Usually, at the end of a book, she briefly talks about what cases may have inspired her, confirming that while the story comes from her imagination, these things can happen in real life.

All in all, I can’t see why anyone would not like these books, and I do recommend them if you like mysteries, police novels or if you like anything related to forensic science.

Changes

So, a while back, it occurred to me that I was wasting hours of my time staring at gifs, so I took a break from Tumblr. But now, I decided to make some changes to it, and actually put it to good use by writing my impressions of the books I read. I should probably mention that this came about after I bought my kindle.

So, without further ado, here’s the new version of my blog, because apparently you can’t delete a primary blog unless you delete your whole account.