Leilani Kaiser: LMST345

     Oops. After reading a good chunk of Mona Lisa Overdrive  and STILL not understanding the world and the people in it, I eventually relented and googled the book's plot, only to find that it was the LAST BOOK in William Gibson's Sprawl  trilogy. No wonder I was so confused. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one confused, which was why I could fully relate to Kumiko Yanaka and her story in the novel.     Kumiko was basically thrown into the story with zero knowledge of what was going on around her. Her father shipped her off to England while he dealt with some Yakuza business, leaving her all alone and alienated in her new surroundings. Fortunately, she meets Sally Shears (who I read was actually named Molly Millions from the first books... which I SHOULD'VE read...), who drags her around London to meet with people with weird names. Even in her chapters, Kumiko feels like an outsider looking in, with Sally feeling like more of a star, most likely because...

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read?            Holy crap. This story only took me a few minutes to read, but those were some of the most uncomfortable minutes of my life. Stuff involving pregnancy unnerves me a little bit, so you can imagine that reading about a dude who was pregnant with flesh eating larvae that were slowly killing him sent some chills down my spine. It left me feeling very uneasy, and if that was the intent, then congratulations Octavia Butler! You did it!! 2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss what elements of the story with which you were able to connect?     I'm happy to say that I don't live on a planet with weird life-forms that have more limbs than normal, so I can't relate to that. However, what I can relate to is being manipulated into thinking that something is right when in reality it's severely detrimental to yourself. In the story, Gan and his sister wholeheartedly believe th...

     ...but words can manipulate you and turn you into a traitor against your own starship crew. In all seriousness though, Babel-17 was a very strange read for me. Reading this novel right after The Martian was a huge change of pace. While in The Martian  I felt that I had a clear picture of Mark Watney's surrounding environment and predicament, I felt like I was walking through a haze while reading Babel-17 . All the stuff about body modifications, and futuristic starships, and the whole concept of a "triple" not registering to me as a form of three-way relationship until I looked it up, it was very confusing. And yet throughout all the haze of world-building exposition, the one thing that stood out to me the most was the concept of using language and words as a weapon.     At first I was surprised at Samuel R. Delany's choice to use a language as the main conflict of the novel. Normally when you think of space adventures, you would picture the main sourc...

      For a guy stranded on Mars with no hope of escape for 4 years, Mark Watney has quite a sense of humor about it.     You'd think that a guy separated from his entire crew and stuck on a planet that is NOT Earth would be freaking out. To which I say, yeah he most certainly is. But this man is SMART. Like, really really smart. So smart that he manages to convert the HAB into a self-sufficient potato farm, converts ROCKET FUEL into FREAKING WATER, and devises a system to communicate with NASA with ASCII written on sample cards. And he does all this while staying optimistic through his humor.     I am not normally a "laugh out loud" person unless I'm watching TV or a movie, but Mark Watney made me chuckle on several occasions. His complaints about Commander Lewis' music and TV tastes are so funny to me because of how dangerous his situation is. He could die at literally any second with one mishap, and yet he finds the time to complain about stupid stu...

     Believe it or not, this was my first foray into the writings of Neil Gaiman. Most of my knowledge about his works came from trivia about Coraline  and occasionally seeing his name in big letters on books in my elementary school. I was always under the impression that Mr. Gaiman wrote very serious novels, along with horror, on occasion. However, I was genuinely surprised while reading Anansi Boys .     This book is really, really freaking funny.     I never really thought Gaiman could be a funny guy. Like, some of his works are super dark! But I think the humor really comes from the situations the characters are put in, or just in the way that he writes. It reminded me of Simon Pegg movies like Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead , with very blunt, dry humor that can only be found in British works. It's not for everyone, but I love it.     There were a couple of gags and scenes that stood out to me. One of them was the preparation of send...