survival

“Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping.” - Lucy Gray Baird

Suzanne Collins bring us another installment of the Hunger Games.  This time she takes us back in time to the Tenth Annual Hunger Games (64 years prior to The Hunger Games trilogy, before Coriolanus Snow was President). 

Snow, eighteen-years-old, is doing what he can to hold what’s left of his family together and keep up with the status quo in the Capital.  Money is tight in the Snow house, and he is afraid he won’t be able to afford University.  An opportunity presents itself when he is assigned as mentor to the

Listed as one of the top 10 most anticipated books of 2020 by Goodreads members, American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins tells the fictional story of Lydia and Luca, a mother and her young son, as they flee from Acapulco Mexico and attempt to cross the US border. Lydia’s journalist husband, Sebastian, publishes an expose about Javier, the head of the drug cartel, which causes all 16 members of their family to be brutally killed. Lydia is acquainted with Javier through her bookstore and knows she and her son were also supposed to die with the rest of her family. As Lydia and Luca journey north to

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you jumped into a black hole? Or maybe you're curious about what would happen if you traveled to another planet, like Jupiter or Venus? Could this book kill you while you're reading it and, if so, how? And Then You're Dead examines these and dozens of other scenarios to offer a scientific explanation for how you would meet your demise in these unlikely and unlucky ways.

Yes, on the surface this book sounds depressing. The authors bring a dry sense of humor to each scenario that effectively balances out the cringe effect of rather gory descriptions

Published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe is an oldie but a goodie! Robinson Crusoe is a young man bent on experiencing sea adventure. He finds himself shipwrecked on a small deserted island and survives for many years. His thought process and perspective alters greatly as the years pass on the island. He reckons with God and begins to realize that God has provided great blessings to him while he has resided there and, indeed, he does live quite comfortably on the island. I enjoyed this immensely more than Defoe's Moll Flanders. 

Oh, I liked this one! I stayed up late to read it and grabbed it first thing in the morning to continue reading. Two strangers are stranded in harsh weather in remote mountains after a plane crash. They need each other in order to find their way out alive. A great recommendation for fans of Nicholas Sparks. The Mountain Between Us is also a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet and Idris Elba. 

When you are a contestant on a reality TV show, how can you tell the difference between what is real and what is manufactured for the program? One woman faces this dilemma as real-world events collide with simulated ones.

The survival-type show begins with twelve contestants sent into the woods to face numerous challenges--singly and in groups, physical and mental. The contestant who outlasts the others wins a cash prize. It seems simple enough, nothing that hasn’t been seen on these types of shows before. Some participants are in it purely for the money; some are out for the adventure. None

What’s going on? Where am I? Who am I? Both the characters in the story and the reader wonder. Sigler has achieved an interesting balance between a thriller-like atmosphere and a slowly unfolding reality.

A group of twelve-year-olds wake up in older bodies, in coffins, with no memory of who they are and how they got there. Thus begins what is slated to be a trilogy.

There’s a somewhat Lord of the Flies flavor to the behavior of these “young adults.” With more questions than answers, and anxiety levels rising, the need for a leader quickly arises. While most of the small group are happy to

Growing up in a rural British Columbia is difficult enough for Jess, Courtney and Dani Campbell before their mother dies.  But after their mother passes things really get difficult. One night things get really bad; Jess grabs the shotgun and accidentally shoots and kills their dad.  Afraid of what will happen, the girls hide the body and take off for Vancouver before anyone can realize what has happened. When the truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere they reluctantly accept help from two young men who are passing by and things go unbelievably downhill from there.  Because they fear a

Take one part 300, one part Das Boot, and one part Inglourious Basterds, and you have Fury, a brutal and overly-earnest tank battle movie. Set in the final days of WWII, five American soldiers are trapped in a disabled tank and must fend off hordes of Germans. Brad Pitt, the commanding officer named Wardaddy, leads Michael Peña, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman and Jon Bernthal in an exciting and bloody fight for their lives. The non-stop action is entertaining, but the numerous war movie clichés make Fury mostly forgettable. Also of interest to some, LaBeouf was reportedly involved in behind-the

Into the White portrays the true story of soldiers aboard German and British fighter planes after they are shot down over the wilderness of Norway on April 27, 1940. The three German soldiers stumble upon an abandoned cabin after trekking through the snowy landscape for days only to find two British soldiers wanting to use the shelter as well. Out of pity, the Germans take the British soldiers in as their prisoners and they begin a push-and-pull for power as the days drag on. Cold, hungry and with one wounded soldier, all five men learn that in order to survive, they have to work together. In

This volume completes Atwood's trilogy that began with Oryx and Crake and continued in The Year of the Flood. In the not-too-distant future, most of humanity has been wiped out by a man-made global pandemic, known by God's Gardeners, a new environmental religious sect, as the waterless flood. But as the trilogy's main characters have discovered, there are more survivors than they originally imagined, and they're not all friendly and supportive. In this installment, the main characters of the previous two novels have converged together with other human survivors and the Crakers (the new human

A near extinction level event strikes the earth, humanity is devastated and left with just a handful of hardy survivors. How will a small group of survivors not just survive but how can they rebuild modern civilization from the ashes? Lewis Dartnell's The Knowledge tries to answer this question and serve as a guidebook for restarting civilization.

The beginning of the book covers how, without routine human intervention, infrastructure quickly begins to rot. Survivors will need to scavenge and scrape to get by. Once able to survive Dartnell describes the processes of rebuilding agriculture

Redshirts is a thoroughly engaging read, with interesting characters, snappy dialogue, and a plot that transports from comedic to thought-provoking at will. The story follows the adventures of a group of "Redshirts" as they fight for survival and try to unravel the mystery of a curse that plagues their ship. Will they figure it all out, or will they suffer the same grim fate so many "Redshirts" have before?  If you are a fan of Star Trek, or science-fiction in general, do yourself a favor and check this one out! The three codas at the end of the novel take a little bit to warm up to, but add

Beth Revis’ fantastic Across the Universe trilogy concludes with this tightly-plotted and fast-paced book.  Shades of Earth begins with the harrowing crash-landing of the Godspeed shuttle, and the following power struggle between Elder as the leader of the Shippers and Amy Martin’s father, who is in charge of the newly unfrozen military personnel.  And after they crash, things really fall apart.  The shuttle is beyond repair, they can’t establish a connection with Earth, and the planet is seemingly hostile---rife with flying pteros and fatal flowers.  Not to mention the ruins scattered around

Do you ever wonder what would happen if several teenage beauty contestants crashed on a seemingly deserted island? This book is about survival:  Can a bunch of pretty teenagers work together or will they die trying?  Then there are the countless others who are sure the teenagers won’t survive more than a couple of weeks. There are reality show pirates who become shipwrecked and large man-eating snakes. This book is full of interesting characters and bizarre plot twists. Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens  is humorous with a message for everyone. But wait, there is more—included in the book are

 The Compound is a short novel that tells the intriguing story of  fifteen year old Eli and his family living underground to escape nuclear fallout. They have been living underground for six years and have just a mere nine to go before they can safely return to the world above.  Tragically Eli’s twin brother and maternal grandmother did not reach the compound before the entrance to the bunker was sealed. Prior to the sequestering of the family, Eli's brilliant father made billions of dollars in technology and seems like a Bill Gates kind of guy.  He was the mastermind behind the building and

I saw an article in the New York Times discussing the 40th anniversary of the publication of Deliverance and decided to give it a try. Although reading it was not always a pleasant experience, I’m not sorry about my decision. I first saw the film years ago, so the plot was not new to me. In spite of this, I could not put the book down until I had finished it. The story begins when four Atlanta suburbanites decide to take a canoe trip down a wild river that is slated to be dammed up. The river itself is a mystical presence in the book: Far more so than in the film. A ghastly event occurs that