Tag Archives: post-apocalyptic

April 20, 2013 · 6:00 am

The Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Apocalypse by Sam Sheridan

doomsday prepper

Just pretend for a minute that the worst has happened – there’s a major apocalyptic event that means you’re on your own. There’s no police, no government,  no food, water, or electricity. Are you prepared?

Sam Sheridan has a ridiculously impressive resume – MMA fighter, student of muay thai, farm hand, wildland firefighter, sailor, and the list goes on. But after becoming a parent, he suffered from insomnia and worried constantly about those never-ending disaster scenarios and whether or not he’s prepared to take care of himself and his family. The answer was to set out to learn whatever he could to be ready, just in case that day ever comes.

The post-apocalyptic world has become a really popular topic for movies, TV shows, and books over the past several years, and I think it makes everyone think “What would I do if I were in that situation?” Despite that, I’m sure not nearly enough people have actually taken steps to prepare for it. In my home, we lean on the “prepper” side – having extra food and water stored, having a bug out bag (or “go” bag), having batteries, candles, and more all set aside just in case something goes wrong. What I really liked about this book is that Sheridan realized that while all of that is well and good, there are skills you might need if the world is coming to an end, and he set out to learn what he could. This is NOT a how-to book. The Disaster Diaries is just about one guy’s quest to learn some things that might be useful if the shit ever hits the fan in a majorly catastrophic way, and it provides some really interesting insights along the way.

I really enjoyed this book, because Sheridan presented many angles that I never thought of and he did so with impressive references and research. It also made me want to do ALL THE THINGS. He goes on to tackle Olympic weightlifting, gun shooting, how to start a car without a key, hunting, knife-fighting, emergency medical care, and more. The start of each chapter starts with a little fictional glimpse into himself trying to keep his family alive in a variety of disaster scenarios, and each chapter ended with the skill he just discussed saving their asses. You wouldn’t think that learning how to stunt drive a car would be handy in a post-apocalyptic world, but it turns out it probably would be.

And for those of you thinking to yourself that this is all a bunch of crap that only paranoid people would worry about, I give you this nice tidbit from the last chapter:

“Preparing for the apocalypse is essentially about walking the line between paranoia and self-reliance. To me, the definition of paranoia is a little like the definition of addiction. If something is destructive to your life – takes your job, alienates friends and loved ones – then it’s an addiction (or paranoia). If it makes your life better, it’s not. By keeping my preparation mostly in the arena of self-reliance and knowledge (as opposed to the “my fallout shelter has four-and-a-half-foot-thick walls” arena), I have only made me life better. I’ve enjoyed learning new skills for dealing with new scenarios – and the confidence that comes with it.”

Sarah Says: 4.5 stars

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January 28, 2013 · 8:00 am

The Stand by Stephen King

The Stand by Stephen King

 

I just finished my first Stephen King novel! I thought that I had read one of his books before, but it seems I did not (I may have been thinking of a different author, like R.L. Stine). Apparently I’ve been living under a rock for years, because everyone and their mama seems to recommend The Stand. The honeyman saw the long-ass mini-series and loved it. I Instagrammed a picture of the book and turns out my aunt really liked it. My friend who has never mentioned it before was all “Oh yeah, it’s good, you could’ve borrowed my copy if you wanted” when I said I was reading it. Several bloggers have said great things about it, including Katie.

I think I’m still processing how I feel about the book overall. So this may be a bad time to write a review, but I also know I might not have laptop access this week so best to do it now. Let’s start off with what in the world this 1439-page book is about, shall we? Basically, a superflu gets let out of a biological testing facility place and then goes on to wipe out over 99% of the people in the U.S. (and probably the world, but that can’t really be confirmed). The few survivors who are immune to it feel a calling, to either band together under the “Dark Man” Randall Flagg, or a sweet 108-year-old woman named Abigail Freeman.

That’s really all that the back of the book tells you. I suppose much more would be a spoiler. So let’s do this review bullet-style, what do you think? Here are the things I liked:

  • A few interesting characters/survivors emerge. My favorite was Stu.
  • I liked seeing how exactly the flu spread, and how completely devastating it was. It was interesting, and I enjoy seeing how these post-apocalyptic worlds come into being.
  • I enjoyed the discussions among survivors about the flu, what it means for the rest of humanity, how society might re-emerge, etc. Glen was an awesome character for this.
  • I like that this book kind of stands out in that a bunch of people die, but there’s no destruction – no massive bombs, or regime changes, or things like that. There’s not even an immediate threat to the survivors, like there would be in a zombie apocalypse. And it means that for the survivors, everything is still in tact and there are so few people left that supplies, food, and transportation are plentiful.
  • The conversations I ended up having with the honeyman as I read. I would tell him what part I was at and how I was feeling about certain characters, and it was fun. I like books that lead to good discussion with people in real life.
  • I got really bummed when something happened to one of the characters that I liked, so that’s good. I like to feel the emotions some time.

Some things I didn’t really like:

  • Likable characters were scarce. I had so-so feelings about a lot of them.
  • The one female main character, Frannie, got really irritating. She wouldn’t stand up for herself when a male character was making her really uncomfortable, and then she actually thought to herself that she was just having “woman vapors”. Are you kidding me? Stand up for yourself, woman!
  • This book was loooooonng. I read the “complete and uncut edition”, and honestly I think the story would have been more effective with some cutting.
  • I never quite understood the rules of the paranormal parts of the story, although I liked some of the aspects of it.

So that may be as coherent as I can be right now! I did like it, overall. It gave me a lot of food for thought and discussion. If it wasn’t so gigantic, it would make a fun readalong book. And now I have my first King novel under my belt! I may try another one later this year, although it can’t be one of his scary ones because I don’t do so well with horror. Any recommendations?

Sarah Says: 4 stars

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May 17, 2012 · 3:04 pm

The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer

The Dead and The Gone

 

The Dead and The Gone is the second book in Susan Beth Pfeffer’s “The Last Survivors” series. I devoured the first book (Life As We Knew It) and really enjoyed the catastrophic world that Pfeffer creates with the idea that an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth and completely screws our world up.

This takes place at the same time as the first book, but it centers around a 17-year-old boy named Alex Morales in New York City. The first book constantly mentioned how things were SO much worse in major cities, especially NYC, so I was really looking forward to a darker, grittier book. I was really disappointed. Alex starts off in a pretty bad situation – both of his parents are missing at the time the moon in knocked closer to Earth, and NYC is in an uproar. Most of the island was flooded, and there’s tales of panic in the streets. But besides trying to take care of his younger sisters, Alex has it okay. The area that he lives in isn’t flooded, and he’s able to get a bunch of food from his uncle’s store. He catches a lot of lucky breaks. Some real bad stuff does eventually happen, but it’s all cushioned with Alex’s devoutness.

I totally get and appreciate that there are millions of people out there who are religious and look to that for comfort in times of crisis. But where Pfeffer could have written a fascinating, gritty account of NYC in total chaos, she made is all seem nice and glossed over with the excess of religion. This is the most pious trio of siblings I’ve ever read about, and it seemed kind of fake. Even the priest in the book told Alex to stop trying to be a saint. Alex had to do some tough things eventually, such as loot from dead bodies. You’d expect a character to feel some sort of way about that and go through a bit of a moral dilemma, but Alex reassured himself that God would want him to do it to survive, and goes to confession later. He used religion to basically gloss over that moral dilemma. It was such a copout. And that’s what basically the whole book was – religion helping to avoid the really tough and scary things that were happening.

And besides the religion stealing the show, little things just bothered me. In the first book they made a point of saying how the major coastal cities were so much worse off than those inland, but it seemed like food and supplies came to Alex and other NY-ers pretty easily. Way easier than inland PA, where the first book took place. Also, the fact that the main characters in this series flinch from guns in these books is a little ridiculous. Come on, the last decade or so has been overrun with zombie / post-apocalyptic movies and books, all teenagers know that weapons are a good idea in these types of situations. Even the saintly teens.

ANYWAYS. Big long rant over. I was really disappointed in the route Pfeffer took in The Dead and The Gone. But for all of that, I’m still going to read the third book (This World We Live In) because I already bought it and feel like I mind as well finish it off. In the next book, Alex somehow meets up with Miranda from the first book, and I’m still really curious to see what happens there.

 I was just hoping for something more realistic with this one, I guess. I hope This World We Live In redeems the series a little for me.

Sarah Says: 2 stars

 

 

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May 14, 2012 · 9:15 am

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Life As We Knew It

Life As We Knew It is the first book in Susan Beth Pfeffer’s “Last Survivors” series (I say series because I think she has a 4th book in the works). I had been wanting to read this book ever since I saw Jess’s review at Tangled Up in Blue and last week when the honeyman and I were out I found it at Barnes and Noble and he bought it for me.

Life As We Knew It is the diary of a 16-year-old girl named Miranda, who lives in Pennsylvania. When she hears all over the news that an asteroid is going to crash into the moon, she’s just annoyed at the extra homework assignments because of it. Still, she gets together with her family and neighbors to watch this historical event, but in a split second people’s excitement turns to fear as the impact knocks the moon much closer to the Earth, and therefore completely screws up Earth’s weather and climate. Miranda’s life gets turned upside down as food  supplies run low, storms occur, and gas prices skyrocket. Miranda’s diary takes us through all of this, an account of how bad things can really get and what matters most in times of crisis.

I am really surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. I devoured it in less than 24 hours. The diary format took some getting used to, but eventually it seemed like the perfect way for Miranda’s story to be told. I loved how the plot was set up as well – at first it’s just the diary of a normal girl who fights with her mom and worries about her grades, and the moon plot is slowly worked in, and then it becomes the diary of a girl just trying to survive. I loved that the book took us through seeing what goes wrong, and what happens as a result of this catastrophe. While reading it I totally got the urge to start stockpiling and prepare for a disaster like immediately.

Miranda is a very realistic character. For example, while I liked that she was a good student and cared about her family and such, she was also a total brat sometimes. There were times I wanted to smack her, but other times when I just kind of wanted to give her a hug. I didn’t think that the whole asteroids-hitting-a-moon-so-let’s-throw-a-party thing wasn’t really realistic – I think that in real life, atronomers and NASA and scientists would be just a bit more concerned. But hey, I guess it could happen. I did really enjoy seeing how Miranda’s family responded to the situation – she’s lucky that she had a mom who immediately took action, even if it all turned out to be no big deal. It’s really scary to imagine all of this stuff happening.

Life As We Knew It was an easy, engrossing read. I’m really, really excited to read the second book, The Dead and The Gone. From what I gather, the second book focuses on a different character in NYC and how he copes with the same events, and I believe that him and Miranda meet up in the third book. In fact, since the Bout of Books readathon starts today, I think I’m going to have to go purchase the second book and start it right away.

Also, you should check out Susan Beth Pfeffer’s blog. It was surprisingly funny, and apparently she has written a crapload of books.

 

Sarah Says: 4 stars

 

 

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December 2, 2010 · 11:20 pm

>The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

>

This book could have been SO much better. I picked it up because it takes place more than a century after a zombie apocolypse. (Which, if you’re familiar with zombie novels, is an unusual timeframe. ) I was curious to see how the surviving humans were dealing so many generations after the zombies first began, how society was managing, etc…

The “Unconsecrated” never died off – instead, living humans built fences around themselves to keep the zombies away, but they’re always out there, right next to the fence if you get too close. Mary lives in one of these fenced-in villages, who believe that they are the only survivors left in the world. The Sisterhood is a strict religious group that rules the village and who try to keep the village safe. But Mary grows up believing fairy tales about other places where people are, about something called an ocean where there’s nothing but water. She dreams of finding it one day.

After losing everything that’s dear to her, Mary enters the Sisterhood and realizes that they know more than they let on. Then there’s a breach in the fence and suddenly the village isn’t safe anymore, and Mary gets her chance to see what’s beyond the fences…

I have two main issues with the book:

1. TOO MUCH INNER MONOLOGUING. I got so sick of being inside Mary’s head. It definitely made the reading go a bit more slowly. Especially when she’s constantly having some sort of inner turmoil over what she thinks she really wants out of life.

2. It seems that this book missed a great chance to explore more the after-effects of the “infection” on the remaining society. I’m also annoyed that just when you learn that the Sisterhood knew more than they let on, the breach happens and you never get the chance to uncover the growing mystery there. A lot of time was spent on showing the darker side of the Sisterhood, but it didn’t end up mattering and that was annoying.

Anyways, great premise. And I did enjoy the beginning of the novel – the setting and general atmosphere were perfect. But a disappointing plot and main character mean that I probably won’t be looking for the companion novel, The Dead-Tossed Waves.

2 stars

~Sarah

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October 4, 2010 · 9:41 pm

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

>Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood book cover

I really have a soft spot for dystopian / post-apocalyptic books. Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was a great one. This one, not so much.

Essentially, Snowman and some new human-like species called the Crakers are the only ones to survive some massive earth-wide thing that kills off all the other humans. The book shows through flashbacks of Snowman’s life what happened leading up to that, and what exactly the Crakers are.

The main thing I like about this book is it’s general message; stop playing God. Stop “creating” animals by mixing up their genes, stop producing fake food, stop trying to surgically or chemically alter yourself, etc. We all know it’s going to lead to bad shit someday, but we just keep getting more scientifically “advanced” everyday. Makes me hate technology sometimes.

Overall though, I’d have to say that this book wasn’t particularly well done. It was hard to care about any of the characters, because the story moved along slowly and because Snowman (AKA Jimmy) was kind of a bland narrator. Crake would have made a much more fascinating narrator, and the story would have moved at a quicker pace. Plus, I really want to know Crake’s logic behind what he did. The only parts of the book that held my interest were when the weird scientific experiments / ideals of this not-too-distant future were being described. Partly because learning about a new post-apocalyptic society that an author has created is always interesting, and partly because there was a lot that needed to be explained to keep the story going. Honestly, I was really tempted about half-way through this book to just put it down and walk away. Figuring out what exactly had happened was the only thing that kept me going. Well, that and I hate to quit a book once I’ve already read so much of it.

Anyways, 2.5 stars. I may check out the sequel, Year of the Flood, because maybe it’ll be a little more fast-moving and will answer some of the questions I still have.

~Sarah

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