Kathy Lauren Miller

 “It’s not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves”  ~ William Shakespeare ~

What does it mean to be human? That is the question Rick Yancey poses in this novel. It is a story about an alien invasion, about beings who are determined to wipe out all of humanity. They hide in our bodies turning the true humans against each other. Scary science fiction aside, this novel is about so much more. It delves into the human psyche. What do we sacrifice to be truly human? Is it in our DNA to sacrifice self for the life of another whether or not we care for that person? Time and again we’ve seen it in the headlines, how someone dove into a raging river to save someone, or rushed into a burning building to save an unknown person. Why do we do it? What causes us to self-sacrifice? Is it the ability to sacrifice our selves for another that makes us truly human? Is that the litmus test?

To quote Shakespeare, “To be or not to be, that is the question”

If you saw the movie but have not read the novel, then you have missed a totally engrossing experience. Warm Bodies is so much more than a star-crossed zombie-human love story. Funny, frightening and tragic by turns, Warm Bodies slyly introduces themes about us,  about our human condition, and about our lives in the here and now. The narrator, R, may have forgotten his name and his life before becoming one of the living dead, but his take on humanity is spot on.

The author, Isaac Marion, has a gift, not only for words, but for clarity and insight. His newest offering, due out in October, is a prequel to Warm Bodies: The New Hunger. You may want to read the prequel prior to Warm Bodies, but I warmly suggest you read Warm Bodies  first.

  Wild, by Cheryl Strayed is a gut wrenching memoir I could not put down. Honest and true to the core, Cheryl’s story stays with you long after the reading of it. Cheryl’s journey along a treacherous desert to mountain trail, all the thirteen hundred miles of it, alone, disheartened with life and love and still grieving the loss of her mother, allowed her to focus on the moment. Each harrowing step, each blistering day under a relentless sun or a freezing night under a quilt of stars, brought her closer to redemption, to absolution.  Her account is so riveting, so tremulous and my suspension of disbelieve so complete, that I felt her thirst, her hunger and all the aches, pains, blisters and the fear and the absolute aloneness. But most of all, I felt her awe of nature, wild and at once both exhilarating and dangerous. She gave herself up to nature, to fate and in the process, found the missing pieces of herself she’d lost years before. I highly recommend this wonderful memoir, and I recommend reading it before seeing the movie.

 Beautifully written and insightful, The Giver is a futuristic glimpse of what life would be like if we all became conformists, where rigid rules of behavior dominate daily life. Individuality in thought and deed are frowned upon. In The Giver, emotions like love, anger and jealousy are against the rules, and breaking the rules results in a dire consequence called, Release. The true meaning of Release is kept secret from the population, only the Elders know and administer it.

The Giver is followed by three sequels: Messenger, Gathering Blue and Son.  It’s best to buy the Quartet because once you start reading The Giver, you’ll want to read the sequels.