The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Cannonball Read 6 – Review #3

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Non-Fiction, history, kind of a biography I guess.

In 1951 Henrietta Lacks died from aggressive cervical cancer. She left behind a husband and four young children. She also left behind a sample of cancerous tissue that did what very little other human tissue had ever done before, it lived. Her tissue survived and reproduced, providing a unlimited source of human cells for experimentation. You can imagine the breadth of research possibilities that became possible when this cell line – called HeLa – originated at Johns Hopkins.

But the Lacks family couldn’t. Continue reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Cannonball Read 6 – Review #3

Possession – Cannonball Read 6 Review #2

Possession (Fallen Angels #5) by J.R. Ward – Paranormal Romance – Spoilers ahead!

The conceit of the Fallen Angels series is that seven souls are at crossroads, heaven and hell are vying for each soul and whoever gets best of seven gets to take over the world.

Jim Heron, the hero of the series, has just traded a win in the aforementioned divine contest to get Sissy Barton out of hell. Cait Douglass, the heroine of the book, is trying to get out there and live life, energized by the death of her art student, Sissy Barton. So now Jim has Sissy and is desperately trying to tell himself and his boner that he’s all altruism. Cait rather suddenly has her choice of two hot but slightly off putting men.

Jim’s story is now far more compelling than the intra-book plot. Cait’s story is interesting and relatable. I think most of us have had to choose between two unknown but seemingly desirable options. The identity of her partner in Happily Ever After is obscured for quite a while. Obscured for even longer is who the soul in play in this round is. Which is a reflection of the fact that Jim has completely lost the plot and is so focused on “caring” for Sissy (e.g. convincing his boner to chill the fuck out) that he completely forgets to be the savior of the universe. Jerk. There is quite a shocking event at the end of the book that I didn’t think made much sense, but I’ll trust Ward to know where she is going with it.

Ward is a reliable writer. Her men are forceful and her women are too.  But she is getting a little too reliable these days. I’m a little pissed off that out of the five books and four souls so far, not one has been a woman. She has been giving us conflicted, glorious damaged male protagonists for a while and now I want a woman who could tip in the wrong direction, rather than women being what brings men back to the light side. That being said, the main antagonist of the series is a woman and she’s awfully evil.

I am hoping that the effort of keeping two series going at once (Black Dagger Brotherhood and Fallen Angels) does not cause either to be diluted.

-fh

 

Adventures in Joblessness – Part the First

I quit my job!

Today was a day of freedom. A day of rest and realizing that having a job was not nearly as important as I thought it was.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to work very hard to get a new job but I’m not going to tie up my identity with my occupation like I did for the last seven years.

Also gonna try to blog more.

-fh

Dragons & Warrior Daughters – Cannonball Read 6 – Review #1

Dragons and Warrior Daughters – Ed. Jessica Yates , a collection of short stories all featuring prominent female characters or protagonists, some of which have dragons.

I picked this book up for two reasons. It has a story from Robin McKinley, one of my most beloved authors, and I am trying to populate my daughter’s bookshelf with positive stories about women and girls.

I got exactly what I was hoping to find. The stories were varied in tone and the role that each woman played. What did not vary was that each protagonist was faced with difficult choices that had no pat answers. Even more than their being women, I enjoyed that each heroine had to choose from imperfect solutions to their problems. Some of the stories had slightly improbable, happily ever after conclusions, others were ambiguous, and others downright depressing.

Some stories had more of a moral than others. The last story, a very dark revenge tale, is a caution to be careful, let we get what we wish for. A story set just after the fall of the Roman Empire illustrates that glory follows those who seek it and true heroes act out of righteous purpose, not a desire for fame. McKinley’s story, which led me to the book in the  first place, is about the power of love but also shows how our greatest proponent and and also our greatest critic lies within and that your life will follow on which you choose to listen to.

I’m happy I picked this up and I will be setting it on the shelf for my daughter to investigate in another 10-12 years. Heck, I might even read it again!

-fh

Polygon is Kind of a Terrible Web Site

Polygon: The Wii U proves you should wait before buying a new console

Yet another stupid stupid STUPID premise from Polygon, home of the scored console review. Guess what: the WiiU proves that if you are interested in next-gen gaming, and particularly in the IPs locked up by a certain console, YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY BUY THAT CONSOLE OR NOBODY WILL MAKE GAMES FOR IT. The damned thing came out, sold OK on goodwill from the original Wii, and once everyone realized there was nothing to play except ZombiU and ports of 360 games, sales tanked. Once sales tanked, WiiU games started getting canceled left and right, and then you have a death spiral. Nintendo is making heroic efforts to finally drag the WiiU up out of the basement by cranking out their own games, but it’s a solo effort; 3rd party enthusiasm from big companies like Activision and Ubisoft has all but dried up.

Yes, the consoles will be cheaper and will have more games worth playing later on. Sheeeeit, they’ll probably even have revised hardware with better failure rates, smaller cases, more sensible features, you name it. Waiting has its benefits. But early adopters drive trends in tech, you cannot argue that. If you want to see electric cars, AR glasses, and proper console gaming then you need to vote for that shit with your dollars or the companies who are putting out the early tentative models of those things are gonna look somewhere else to make their money. Industry cannot read our minds and does not owe us the future we don’t ask for.