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Book Review: Blackout by Mira Grant

( #newsflesh, #blackout )

I wasn’t sure if I was going to read the third and final book in Mira Grant’s “Newsflesh” trilogy, but then Anthony Bourdain’s tales of kitchen mishaps had me seeking shelter from reality. I did not react favorably to the 2nd book (“Deadline“) but I decided to give Grant a chance to see if she ended on a good note.

WARNING: There will be spoilers about the trilogy in this review, read at your own risk…

“Blackout” is better than “Deadline” but does not deliver on the potential that “Feed” established. The plot has some problems. Grant fully commits to the concept of “Cloned George”. I didn’t like the decision to bring the character back, but Grant fully commits to the idea and concept which I respect.

The first 50% of the book essentially makes the events of “Deadline” somewhat pointless. Grant makes references to the second book, but outside of revealing George was cloned and a larger CDC conspiracy at play, nothing else really carried over. Most of these pages are spent trying to get the reader to accept “Cloned George” as the real deal. Grant makes the character doubt her own authentication as a means to endear her to the readers, but then has every character say “oh, we accept you now after three seconds of doubt – GLAD TO HAVE YOU BACK!”.

The reasoning for her cloning is weak… something about making America trust the news she is saying even though she is a clone and the big reveal is backed up by all the other characters having multiple cameras filming the entire exchange. At the start of “Blackout” Shaun’s crew have two clear missions:
1. Get Alric’s sister out of Florida (which has a massive zombie outbreak due to artificially created insects that now carry the virus).
2. Get fake IDs from a character named “the monkey”

The main characters don’t accomplish either task and I feel like there was a lot of pages wasted to conclude those points. I would not mention this if Grant was above using short cuts in other sections of the book. Shaun finds “Cloned George” completely by accident. There was no way that could or should have happened. It would have been easy for Grant to modify a few points to make Shaun end up at the Seattle CDC with more purpose.

Then there is the whole reveal that George and Shaun (adopted brother and sister) are hooking up. Yes, while reading the first book, I definitely got the vibe that something was going on, but Grant didn’t push it. That was the right call. I feel like she succumbed to pressure to put those two characters together. She could have left it vague and let the readers decide for themselves. There is also issue of Shaun’s immunity to the virus due to his “interactions” with George v1.0.

On the positive side – Grant downplays the zombies in this book in favor of character development, which I totally agree with. The zombies are a background threat at all times (and useful plot devices to add danger), but she allow her previous work to set the stage and focused on finishing the story. I also appreciated the fact that there is a conclusion to this story. A clear conclusion. If you factor out the major weaknesses that I just brought up, the story actually comes to a satisfying end. This in itself caused an issue: the story’s beats fell exactly where they should have so the “big reveal” was a little flat, but organic. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” pretty much sums it all up.

I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up the voice in Shaun’s head. I called this out in the last review as a writer’s crutch, but when “Cloned George” shows up, things get weird as Shaun has conversations with the George in his head and also the clone. Then the voice goes quiet for a while but starts to get loud again towards the end but gets all possessive and suicidal – and then never gets mentioned again.

This review is a little more critical than I intended it to be because I liked this book much more than the 2nd installment, I just feel that it could have been better. It also confirmed my comments about “Deadline” not really needing to exist. “Deadline” and “Blackout” would have been much better trimmed down and presented as one book, but I don’t fault Grant from needing to make a living.

My recommendation is to read “Feed” and then skip to this book. Anything you need to know about “Deadline” you can find out within a few chapters. Grant’s attempts to stay ahead of the readers by setting up missions that completely get derailed are commendable but sloppy. Ultimately, she does a decent job at finishing what she started but never quite lives up to the promise of the first book.

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Fatherhood: Father’s Day

( #FathersDay )


Credit: Hallmark

Today is Father’s Day. It is the first one that I am celebrating as a father (and not just as a son). My son just passed the three month mark this week, so I thought it was just general good timing to sit down and collect my thoughts again about this whole parenting experience.

If you asked me to boil down the last three months, it has been an emotionally rewarding ride. But I am not saying that everything has been sweetness, new life means growing pains: for my son and for my wife and I. One of the skills we have had to develop is to have confidence in ourselves and put aside the advice of others.

I know that comes off as arrogant, but when it comes to children, everybody has an opinion. EVERYBODY. A couple of months ago, our doctor group (I say group, because our son has pretty much been seen a different doctor every time he goes in for a checkup) was concerned about weight, which in talking to many parents is fairly common. The doctors wanted to get the boy on formula. Of course I immediately ran out to buy some, but my wife wanted to explore other options. We read up on it and discussed the issue with certain friends and family (note that we reached out versus having advice shoved down our throats), the universal response was find a lactation consultant. We did. She resolved the issue in 5 minutes. Let me stop now and say that I don’t think there is anything wrong with formula, but I do believe that breastfeeding yields additional benefits.

I have a friend who is a nurse and he told me that most medical professionals only get a few paragraphs of training/information on breastfeeding when they are in school. This sent me into a rage because if they had more training (or had a lactation consultant on site), we would have resolved my son’s issues a few weeks earlier (and with less judgement). Since meeting with the consultant, our son has been consistently gaining the weight he needs (and the last few check-ups he exceeded the doctor’s expectations), but that didn’t stop me from asking the newest doctor why the practice was anti-breastfeeding.

She didn’t deny it. She basically said that breastfeeding is hard and when there is an issue they tell most mothers to switch to formula. That blew my mind. The takeaway lesson from this is: do your research, get several independent points of information, and obviously look at the child to see if they are: cranky, have bad skin, or have irregular bowel movements (especially urinating) to determine if you have a larger issue. Telling a doctor off is not high on my things-to-do list, but this lady needed a reality check and I hit her with hard facts, metrics (which we tracked religiously for weeks), and pointed out several flaws with their own process (complete lack of consistency). She just stammered and backed off.

That was a solid “Dad-moment” for me because my wife and I did what we believed was right and got the positive results we hoped for. We stood up against the experts because their advice was generic and the easiest possible answer to give. They used scare tactics to bully us into using their sole suggestion instead of discussing options and alternatives (or even attempting to determine what the issue was in the first place). I am not mad at the doctors because the process of finding an alternative made me more informed and thus a better parent, which has been my objective every damn second this kid has been breathing air.

On a related note, I recently read an article on CNN, that calls out the stereotype of the “idiot father”. Apparently Huggies aired a commercial that made it seem like fathers were morons and a few male bloggers took offense to it. While I think the bloggers overreacted to the commercial, I do want to comment on the changing times.

I change diapers, watch my son so my wife can go out and feel like a real human being, wash him (we still need to tag team on that – he is a slippery little bastard). I also do most of the cooking, clean the house, do the food shopping, and of course, go to work. I am not complaining; I want my son look at me and not see a stranger. I want to set a good example for him and not make him think it is okay to sit on his ass while somebody is doing work around him (and I want a little helper in the kitchen). I think there are plenty of guys out there doing the same.

I have a set of values that are not the same as my parent’s, my family, or my friends (fortunately, my wife and I are on the same page). Those values have been hard earned through my mistakes and successes. I will pass these values on to my son (and any other children I have). He can choose to reject them if they don’t work for him, but I will at least give him a framework so he can work this stuff out for himself and learn to be his own person – which should be the goal of any good father.

To all the Dads out there doing the best they can, Happy Father’s Day.

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Book Review: Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire

( #OutOfOz, #BookReview )

I really liked “Wicked” when I read it several years ago. I thought flipping the whole “Wicked Witch of the West” concept over was a clever idea that resulted in a great story. The following books (“Son of a Witch” and “A Lion Among Men“) were less satisfying with each page turn. “Out of Oz” follows the pattern of its predecessors, resulting in an unsatisfying conclusion.

The fourth volume focuses on Liir’s daughter Rain. Maguire sets her up to be a blank slate in the beginning of the book and is the reader’s point of view character up until the middle of the story. Rain’s parents hide her in Glinda’s estate until the tensions of the war blow over. Eventually (and obviously) Rain has to leave and spends the next quarter of the book walking around Oz with the Cowardly Lion not doing anything particularly interesting. Then the girl goes to school, echoing the Wicked Witch’s (Elphaba) education in the first book. The reader needs to get through 50% of the book before really getting to know the lead.

The war between the Emerald City and Munchkinland forces Rain to leave the school with her almost-boyfriend. They find their way back to the assembled cast from the previous books and are then broken apart to wander around some more. All of this wasted page space results in a massive amount of story being told in the last few chapters. The war comes to a climax and several completely unnecessary plot twists are introduced. The characters mope around because of said twists and then the book ends with no clear resolution.

Fundamentally, my issue with the book is the literal lack of direction. The majority of the story finds the characters wandering around avoiding conflict (and thus interest). “Out of Oz” suffers from poor chronology, which Maguire admits/addresses during the whole “Trial of Dorothy Gale” section; he casually mentions that several years pass between each chapter, but the end of the book Rain is said to be between 12-15. Due to one of the twists, it would be comforting to have a clearer idea of the girl’s age by the end of the book.

Maguire spends many words establishing the visuals and tone of Oz. He didn’t need to, the last three books already did a fine job of painting that picture. “Out of Oz” could have been excellent with the help of strong editing and a clearer focus on the end game. There seems to be an opening for another book, but I think I am done with Greg Maguire’s vision of Oz. If you haven’t read any of the books start and stop with “Wicked” and thank me later.

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Computer Joey: Social Reading (ver 2.0)

Earlier in the week, I told you how to have a much better social reading experience for you and your friends. While researching that article, I came across some next level techniques for more advanced users.

In this article, I will teach you how to use Tumblr to share information across all of your social media accounts. I will also discuss how to use your own custom URL shorten-er with all of these services.

A few things you need to do before we start:

  • You need to read the first article because I am piggy-backing off of stuff I already documented.
  • Get a Tumblr account/blog.
  • Optional: Get a bitly account.
  • Optional: Get a twitterfeed account.

1. Add Tumblr to your share options in Google Reader:

The first article in the series covers how to set up RSS feeds in Google Reader, and the second will tell you what to click on to add various services like Twitter and Facebook. One of the other options is Tumblr. Instead of choosing Facebook or Twitter, pick Tumblr in the options (like the picture above).

Tumblr is more robust than Twitter but still designed to make simple and short posts. It is a great services that allows customization. Here is a quick tutorial on setting up an account:

As mentioned in the earlier post, at the bottom of each article in Google Reader, there will be a share button. When you click on it, the social media options you selected will appear:

When you click on Tumblr, this screen will appear:

You can mess around with more formatting or adding extra information, or you can just click on create post. The screen will wait a few seconds and then close itself.

2. Connecting to your social media accounts:

There are two ways to do this, one simple and one more complicated (but with more metrics).

Simple Method:

If you don’t have a custom URL shorten-er and you don’t care about how many clicks and shares you are getting, you can connect your Tumblr account with Facebook and Twitter:

a. Sign into your tumblr account and go to your news feed blog. Click on “Blog Settings” on the right:

b. Then scroll down to the Facebook and Twitter sections. Click on the check-boxes and then click on the buttons to link your social media accounts and follow the screen instructions:

Your posts to Tumblr (which are fed via your RSS Reader) will now post to social media accounts.

The Complicated Method:

When you create a Tumblr blog, there is a link somewhere on the page for a RSS Feed:

The RSS feed is usually your tumblr blog url with “/rss” at the end.
Example: “http://example.tumblr.com/rss”

a. Once you have your RSS feed url, go to twitterfeed and create a new feed (top right corner). Put your RSS feed in the box:

b. If you want to track your traffic or add your own custom url shorten-er, click on advanced settings in step one:

A few notes on this step:

c. Click “Continue to Step 2”

d. On this screen you can link your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts to Twitterfeed. As soon as you post something to Tumblr, it will automatically post that link to your social media sites. When you are done authenticating the services you want to use, click “all done”

Conclusion:

I know that was a long post, but once you get this set up, it is really easy to share information with your friends. The added benefits are that they don’t have to share any information about themselves to read your articles, you can see if your posts are actually being read, and you have a repository of all of your shared posts moving forward.