{"id":8,"date":"2014-01-20T01:56:58","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T01:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/?p=8"},"modified":"2014-01-20T01:56:58","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T01:56:58","slug":"only-you-can-save-mankind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"Only You Can Save Mankind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pics.darthcricket.com\/journal\/reading\/onlyyoucansavemankind.jpg\"><br \/>\nFrom &#8216;Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett, first in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy<\/center><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been reading a lot lately and forgetting to, well, mention it. A lot of it&#8217;s been comics (I heartily recommend <i>Castle Waiting<\/i> by Linda Medley, <i>Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong<\/i> by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks, and of course I&#8217;m super excited they&#8217;re publishing the Ruby and Sapphire arc of <i>Pokemon<\/i> FINALLY. There is something satisfying I can&#8217;t even explain about seeing the games in art the way they were in my head. Also, the <i>Ace Attorney<\/i> comics are surprisingly pleasing! This has been a long sidetrack.) which aren&#8217;t as easy to review, but the books have been pretty good for the most part. <\/p>\n<p>Read some Christie, <i>Poirot&#8217;s Early Cases<\/i> as well as <I>And Then There Were None<\/i>, both of which I really enjoyed. The second creeped me out pretty good in parts. The basic plot is, people are summoned mysteriously to a house and then they start dying.<\/p>\n<p>Right before the above quoted book, I was reading <i>The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane<\/i> by Kate DiCamillo which is about a porcelain toy rabbit who is loved very much by a little girl, but doesn&#8217;t care about her. One day he&#8217;s lost at sea and ends up passing through the ownership of people he comes to care for very much and anyway, I had to shut that book down in the middle while I was reading because it made me start crying on an airplane. Considering I was also suffering from pretty bad food poisoning, I felt I&#8217;d alarmed my seatmate enough for that ride.<\/p>\n<p>Kate DiCamillo wrote <i>Tale of Despereaux<\/I>, which remains one of the best books I ever read, and this one isn&#8217;t disappointing. When I found her other books were available as ebooks, they got boosted way the hell up on my to-read list, but are now officially &#8216;do no read in front of other people&#8217; books. <\/p>\n<p>Right after shutting down the book to regain composure, I had to choose another book and fast to switch gears. I chose <i>Only You Can Save Mankind<\/i> by Terry Pratchett, a YA book he wrote early on. His early stuff is kind of dire, but it was just what I needed. It&#8217;s full of interesting character descriptions and a fun videogame story with an alien race I like.<\/p>\n<p>The only problem was the main character, Johnny Maxwell who was inoffensive but so generic that once he started interacting with the girl in the story I started desperately wishing he was Janie Maxwell because at least I wouldn&#8217;t feel like I was reading about a cookie cutter protagonist and it would have made parts of their interaction a lot less urgh to read.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m starting on the next book in the trilogy now, <i>Johnny and the Dead<\/i> which ominously starts off with Terry Pratchett explaining <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pal_Battalion\">Pal battalions<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From &#8216;Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett, first in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy I&#8217;ve been reading a lot lately and forgetting to, well, mention it. A lot of it&#8217;s been comics (I heartily recommend Castle Waiting by Linda Medley, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks, and of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/?p=8\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Only You Can Save Mankind<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6,8,7,9],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-sci-fi","tag-b-minus","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-ya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9,"href":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybookreport.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}