Review: Dark Matter

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was recommended this book by my brother-in-law Danny. He gave a pretty accurate description as a mixture of romance, suspense/thriller, and sci-fi.

This was definitely an interesting book that had a number of twists. (view spoiler)[It's definitely one of those books where you know everything is going to work out for the protagonist, no matter how bad things seem to get. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and I personally don't mind that comforting cloak of invincibility around protagonists. I was actually surprised that both real Daniel and Charlie survived. I thought he would lose at least one (my bet was on Charlie). I guess Crouch figured that Jason had had enough from seeing his wife die twice already. (hide spoiler)]

The thing I really disliked about this book is Crouch's pervasive use of one-sentence paragraphs. I am tempted to count to see the ratio of how many one-sentence (or one-phrase) non-dialogue paragraphs he has compared to multi-sentence non-dialogue paragraphs. It feels incredibly choppy, and it was very distracting for me. I understand that it is simulating the disorientation that Jason is feeling, but I felt it didn't really produce that because it was so overused.

So I actually did count the number of one-sentence non-dialogue paragraphs and multi-sentence non-dialogue paragraphs in Chapter 1, just to see. I might have miscounted one or two in there, but I counted 262 one-sentence paragraphs and only 70 multi-sentence paragraphs. I was already feeling annoyed with these things after Chapter 1, but I felt like maybe it was excusable since it's a pretty exciting chapter. But this keeps going at about the same pace for the rest of the book, and it just felt like watching a cheesy TV show with the camera angle changing every second.

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Review: Respect the Spindle

Respect the Spindle by Abby Franquemont
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up this book at a spinning shop in Kyoto, Japan called Kin no Hitsuji, which translates to Golden Sheep. It was a bit of an impulse buy and was a little pricey at 3614 yen.

I am a brand new spinner and was looking for a book specifically about spindle spinning. I am not very interested in buying a wheel, so it was nice to feel validated in sticking with spindles entirely. The parts about this book that I enjoyed most are where Franquemont writes about her personal experiences and outlook on spinning. I felt the how-to parts are rather weak, and I don't think I will be referencing this book for the majority of learning to spin. I feel like drafting is the area in which I would like the most help, which this book just didn't do for me.

The book also has four patterns at the end of the book. Only one, a hat, is for crochet, which I plan to check out in the future.

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Review: Black Thursday: The Story of the Schweinfurt Raid

Black Thursday: The Story of the Schweinfurt Raid by Martin Caidin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I used $0.99 worth of free Amazon credits toward Great on Kindle eBooks to 'purchase' this book. This is another book from www.digitalhistorybooks.com, of which I have read Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea by Daniel V. Gallery.

This book was much drier and felt more like a laundry list at times. There is certainly a story being told, but it is easy to get lost in the statistics and raw facts that are disgorged in quick succession. There is one chapter in particular where the majority of the chapter is a list of planes that are destroyed or damaged by five planes in a span of twenty or so minutes. Perhaps this is something some people enjoy reading about, but I did not.

I appreciated that Caidin portrays this failure in a way that respects airmen on both sides. I especially enjoyed the story about the American airmen's reaction to the poster with "Who's afraid of the big bad wulfe?" Another entertaining portion was the story of the airman who makes his way back to England after bailing out in Germany.

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