Review: The Murder of Adam and Eve by William Dietrich

First, thanks to Burrows Publishing and Netgalley for allowing me to read an e-galley of this.  It was okay.  As I look back at it, it probably was a little better than I thought.  The idea is an interesting one, I just got a little bored at parts. 

The main character is a 16 year old boy named Nick.  Thanks to his new substitute history teacher, he has tried to do some research on an old military fort out on a nearby island.  But once he gets out there, something strange happens when he goes into what looked to be a blocked tunnel. All of a sudden he blacks out. When he wakes up, everything seems different.  There are no noises of other people, boats, airplanes, etc.  But he runs into a girl named Ellie, who tells him that she's been recruited by some aliens named the Xu in order to try to convince them that humans are worth saving.  They talk about how humans have destroyed the planet and are violent and don't deserve to continue.  In order to prove that humans are worth saving, Ellie and Nick are sent back to prehistoric time to where the scientific "Adam" and "Eve" are.  And they must save them before the Xu get there and kill them. 

At first they are just out in the wilderness, and they must survive among the lions and other animals, like snakes, and even hyenas.  They must figure out how to get food.  And after doing that, then they must find this Adam and Eve.  And once they've done that, they must figure out what they can do to prove they deserve to live.  But Ellie and Nick have a lot of different ideas about how to do this.  Ellie wants to hide the ancestors, while eventually Nick feels they will have to stand up and fight.  And when it seems things may be right the way they should be, both Nick and Ellie will have to beware of the other possibly betraying what they want.  In the end, decisions will be made, and the Xu will move on leaving humans to continue to prove their worth.  Nick will learn what kind of a person he is, and what he needs to do in order to help the human race.

The descriptions of the animals and the landscapes was beautiful and very vivid.  But at times this is where I got bogged down in the story, and I got to where I was skimming along to get to the point where they would find the Adam and Eve. And once there, I definitely got interested in how things would turn out.  How would they save Adam and Eve?  And with the time travel, I just wondered how in the world would they be able to get away with everything they did and showed those people without totally messing up the future that Nick and Ellie came from.  At the very end of the book I liked how the author had a bit of information about the real science and history of the time period talked about, as well as the Earth's history.  It was refreshing to see all of it put out there, and the author to point out what things he'd taken liberty with for the sake of the story. 

So, a good read, definitely a journey story, not a road trip though, no roads back then.  But so much was beautiful reminders of nature and a much simpler time.  Even while reminding us how good things really are today, even with all the bad stuff.  I also liked that while the aliens did talk about the bad things humans had done to the planet, I didn't feel a lot of preaching like there often is on that subject.  All in all, I would recommend it for people who enjoy a bit of time travel along with true-ish history and through provoking ideas.

A to Z April - N: Nonfiction

For today's post I'm kind of lumping a bunch of different types of books together.  There are so many different types of nonfiction, or "true" books.  I'm going to choose a few of my favorites that I actually read and share them with you.


1.  I already shared probably my favorite with you, and that was biographies/memoirs.  You can go back and read my post on that HERE.

2.  My second favorite group would probably be science.  As a former science teacher, with my undergraduate degree in biology and earth science.  Some of my favorite science books you can see below, and you can tell I guess, that I'm a huge dinosaur freak.  And the last one I actually included with my biography post back on #1, but it is a lot of science, and I loved that.



3.  My 3rd favorite type of nonfiction is humor.  This can be memoirs again, I love a funny life story.  Or else lately there have been some books based on technology type things that I read and it just cracks me up!!  Here are a few of my favorites.
 

4.  History is another area that I sometimes find interesting.  I don't know that I've actually read that many history books, and a lot of them though, are often true crime types of books.  Here are the ones I remember reading.  The last one I'm still reading.  I have it on my iphone and whenever I go somewhere and don't happen to have anything to read, I can pull it up and read. 



5.  The final type of nonfiction I like to "read" are cookbooks.  I technically don't read them, just look for recipes I like and then make them.  If I have time.  And I also picked this because I got to listen to the author of the Hungry Girl cookbooks, and now diet last night, so I wanted to share that picture.  But first I'll share 3 cookbooks I have actually used.

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And here is a picture of Lisa Lillien, the "Hungry Girl" herself, speaking last night at the Barnes and Noble where I work part time.

So, how about you? Do you read much nonfiction?  If so, what type do you like to read?

Elephant Run by Roland Smith

I am a HUGE Roland Smith fan. I was first introduced to his writing when he came to speak at my school, and I have yet to be disappointed by a book from him. I will admit this started out a bit slow, I was reading it just during lunch at school, and I think that was the problem. When you pick this book up and just read, you soon get sucked into it. This is another book that really gets you interested in history. Elephant Run takes place in Burma during World War 2. There isn't really a Burma anymore. It is Myanmar now. But this talks about the elephants in that area and tells how the Japanese came in and used the elephants and the people who trained them, the mahouts, to build up their defense. I love the nature that Roland Smith also uses in his books.

I also like that there are literature circle questions included with this addition of the book. Tempts me to use it as a book I read during my Greater Gator class next year. We'll see. I do kind of like to do books that they can read off the Truman list to help the librarian as well.