Blog Move!

Google Blogger has been a great beginner blog, but this blog is moving on to a new social media. WordPress. For my loyal few on this medium I hope you follow me in this move. I'll have the link listed directly below.

http://booksinyourbackyard.com/2015/07/23/welcome-to-books-in-your-backyards-new-home/

More of everything Caitlin Rambling will be coming to you at this address. Thank you all for the time I've spent here and I hope to see you in the WordPress Future.

Comic Books

Not enough people read them. Yes, I said read them. Not watch them. I know there is an influx of superhero movies and tv shows. But if you know anything about comic books, you know that the DC Universe is clinging to the Batman franchise. At least they were, now with Ben Afflack, we'll see the Titanic finally sink after its many minutes afloat. Say what you want, I don't like Ben Afflack. I don't know him as a person, but his acting, I do not admire. Or applaud. DC, wake-up, you've got some great potential in characters, like Suicide Squad, but what about Huntress? She has a great moral and confidence for younger woman and her story is invigorating. Where's that movie? Perhaps hire the Dark Knight director for every single one of your movies, the only director you've had that has been successful.Marvel, Marvel has mastered the movie franchise on comic books. Almost every movie they have made has been successful, but I just wish they would stop rebooting character stories that already have a movie. But I'm not quite sure where their transition from Spiderman, Fantastic Four, and now Ant-Man was. 

Anyway, back to my point. Comic Books, they're books. They're that great change-up short story or literary soap opera, To Be Continued. But, here's my Cheat Code List of Comic Books for the nerd in your life.

1. For that shy girl in your life that flirts with comic books, Huntress is for her.                                                            Daughter of a huge mob family that runs Italy to Gotham, she grew-up watching her mother mistreated by her temperamental father. Her only escape into the comforting grasp of her faith. When another family branch of the mob orders the death of her family, she not only looses her Cross, but her father, mother, and brother in cold blood around the family dinner table. She then goes on to grow-up in a relative household much like her own, taking on her cousin as her Older Brother, her tutor as her Mother figure, and her Uncle as her bastard father. When she was finally 21, she has come to the age for her inheritance. One she would use, to hunt down the relative that ordered the kills and the killer himself. A journey that would take her to closure, a friend of Batman's, taking on the entire Mob, and going against her traditional Italian ways. She vows to never be like her mother. To never be dependent on a man, to never be weak. To fight back for everything she believes in in Woman's Rights. After her origin story, her comics continue, taking out criminals that disrespect Women such as Sex Traffickers. 
2. For your nasty mind friend or family member, Deadpool is for them.                          Imagine ADHD, a high sex drive, adolescent hunger, and prepubescent humor all mixed into one. Deadpool has an origin very similar to Wolverine. Came from that secret warehouse, from all of the  experiments he doesn't have claws like Wolverine, but the regenerating factor. So he just can't die. Shoot him, wait a couple of seconds,
   
   "Chimichangas," and repeat. However, from all of the experiments, Deadpool's outer appearance has been ravished. Through a majority of comic book pages, you'll see Deadpool has only two costume changes: Commando and Superando. Deadpool is a raging sex lunatic, loves heroines in his area because he loves to stare at their chest. Deadpool makes those nasty sexual jokes that you hate to laugh at because you feel like a Middle Schooler, but then you do, because, they're funny. You will laugh more at Deadpool and his confidence more than you laugh at an obvious over-compensator. Plus, he's got that marketing outfit, body, and equipment. Just check-out his swords. 
3. Your Old School Classmate, Steampunk is there for you. Introducing, Lady Mechanika.                                                                                               Joe Benitez, the creator of this character, just completed her origin story, but since I'm awaiting my final comic to be delivered to me, I don't even know her full story. Here's what I do know. Lady Mechanika awakens into self-consciousness one day and escapes from her confusing surroundings. Once she has escaped, she discovers half of her limbs have been replaced with early nineteenth century machinery. Clogs and wheels and all of
   
   that, to a much more advanced level as any Steampunk fan knows. For the last period of her life she has been trying to track down her creator, who did this to her, and who is still doing it to innocent girls? Going from clue-to-clue with her drunk, genius assistant, go from cities, to towns, to land, to grand hot air balloons. Being completely obsessed with this series for three years, waiting and waiting for production to finally make the next edition. Thank God for any of you who get this comic now, it seems production has finally fallen upon a stable delivery. Her origin story is complete an now onto her series of mysteries. Which I am also waiting got that delivery as well, but I love this character and storyline. So if you like steampunk, get this comic.
4. For those, don't change it, change scares me, friends and relatives, you know what I'm gonna suggest, the classics: Superman and Wonder Woman.                                     Having grown-up on Wonder Woman, I have a nostalgic love for her. But, I was even more impressed with the reboot, where she had pants, and where her morals and ethics
   
   weren't as solid from the beginning as they were at her character's creation. She began as naive and vengeful and grew to learn, you actually saw character development in this one. Something you haven't seen before with Wonder Woman. There are even projects in the works with her, but I hope they follow this model. Superman, superman never ever ever changes. His underwear has been the same shade of red as Covergirl Hair dye commercials. The Wonder Woman Odyssey, I highly recommend it. The reboot Wonder Woman has been waiting for.

If this blog post does well, we'll see more of these Ramblings in the future.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

Is it outdated to admit that I listened to this book?

Relax readers, it wasn't from a tape I put in my old car or running man, it was on Audible.com. Which, I must take a quick second a promote Audible. It's great. You get a free credit every month to use to buy any size book. I've been using Audible for the last four years. Listening to the presidential war of 1800 between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and all the rest to Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

First off, right off the bat, one thing I must note that is great and rare, is that Mindy Kaling was the voice reading her own book. For some reason, there is just that click when the author's name matches the author's voice.

Secondly, this book is full of funny rants and stories. Real experiences. Not celebrities trying to seem more human than the perfect illusions their PR people put out. This is not a long story of work and strife, it's a short read or listen in my case, that is highly entertaining.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling gets 5 out of 5 stars.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

I believe this will please all you war story fans out there, because this is one for the record books.

The Things They Carried is a story written in a fictional memoir prose if that makes sense. The story is not true, but you have this time lapse from the present to the past and the connections and parallels in the incidents which remind one of memoir stories. The book never outright says that this happened or that it didn't, but it's not a Million-Little-Pieces-Perception-Problem here, you will find it being sold in the fiction section of your local Barnes & Noble or Strand Books or other bookstores.

Imagine Vietnam, soldiers being pushed into the pain and hard truth of the world involuntarily. How would you react? To the new environment, the responsibility weighing on your soldiers with all the necessities hiking from location to location in this blood ripened world.

It brings up the question. What do you carry? Your potential and your books. Your work pressure and your family pressure. If you're a girl that always has a bag with her, what's in that bag? What's in your wallet? What's in your car? What do you never leave the house without? What do you immediately miss when you leave it somewhere?

This is a story of pressures, responsibilities, severe emotions, war, family, and everyone's consequences for anything and everything.

If you're also studying writing, this book makes use of long descriptive sentences and list phrases. This book is a good source to break apart and find what makes some styles successful and what is overkill. In my own personal opinion, I believe this tactic has been dead and continuously stabbed in this book, way too many. Tim O'Brien gets the point across of the weight we are all always carrying and the consequences on your persona from lifting such great weight, but, I don't need the point made every page of the book.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien gets 4 out of 5 stars. The overkill killed off one of its stars. 

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

You can hate me all you want, I did not like this book. I know, I know, it's a classic. Anyone who loves and studies literature likes this book. I did not like this book. And no, it's not because I took the possibility of waking up one morning as a large bug literal, I know, it's meant to be read metaphorically by literary critics. First off, the book was meant to be read literally by Franz Kafka, it was written as a comedic piece. Accidentally, it took on this huge form of metaphysical meaning and symbolic representation.

I don't think I'm spoiling anything in this book by stating the metaphor and symbolism in this book is: we're all bugs working and working and working until the day we die. Ta Da!

The writing is more like a play/skit for SNL. It's just horrible and for some weird reason, draining to sit down and read through this book. I can't explain it. It's similar to someone draining the water from your eyes and then has you focus on something to watch the desert grow atop my iris.

I would not recommend this book for you to read. Unless, everything I just said sounds enticing to you. Then by all means, you read it. I have and I'm done.

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka gets 2 stars. Just for the accidental symbolism and life lesson. Don't be a bug in your life. 

The Stranger by Albert Camus

I don't care what anyone says, I liked this book.

The estranged third person writing, the blunt ugly sentences, and the harsh reality of relationships and social connections.

In the scenario of blurred vision (literally and mentally) with the belief of danger lurking your way, would you shoot the gun in your hand or hope for the best?

I don't know about you, but I would shoot the gun. And then my life would spiral the way the plot unfolds in The Stranger. Death, Trial, Hatred, and the Truth about relationships (if you'd like the truth without paying a psychologist thousands and thousands of dollars) read this book.

The Stranger by Albert Camus gets 3.5 stars 

Update

I see people are reading this blog, which shocks me to my very core, especially considering that the number remains up even when I haven't posted or gone on the offensive of publicity in quite some time. So I feel the need to explain myself to this void.
First off, I apologize. I haven't kept up this blog with the books I have read, so stay tuned because they'll be coming quickly and feverishly. Make sure not to read this blog for too long, you'll get sick with the feverish posts (Mu Hu Haw Haw).
Anyway, below is a list of books that will be coming, in no particular order than the top of my memory.
                    1. Beloved
                    2. The Stranger
                    3. Metamorphosis
                    4. The Things They Carried
Secondly, I also have been hoarding books for the time I would devour them all one by one in a literary feeding frenzy. So they'll be a lot of surprises as well.
Third off, don't feel scared to comment. Agree, disagree, will you read it, will you hide from it, or make any suggestions you feel I should or should not read. The comment bar is there a wise female created it for us all to share our thoughts and feelings. My theory is that she was a sharer, talker, perhaps even a genius turned politician. I don't know.

Hold onto your bookmarks, here comes the page turning storm of a century.