Kevin Lau

My mother listened to the audio book, my father watched the movie, and here I am, having just finished a printed copy of this magnificent book.

A man and his son walk a road in a post-apocalyptic world with one goal: Make it south, to the coast, to survive the winter. With only a pistol with two bullets, their supplies in a grocery cart, and each other, they struggle to survive from starvation and avoid the danger that lurks in the darkness that surrounds them.

“The Road”, in itself, is a masterpiece. It is a collection of poems written simply and used to tell the story (so, yeah, cool your jets, grammar nazis). The story is intriguing, the details vivid, and the prose gripping. The world Cormac McCarthy creates is realistic and quite disturbing. There were times when reading the book when I cringed or had to re-read some parts because I couldn't believe what I had just read. And the overall stories of good and evil and a bond between a father and son are extremely well executed.

“The Road” is perhaps one of the best of the post-apocalyptic genre, being both well-written and containing a great plot and great characters.

Feels like Brandon Sanderson writing on autopilot, but not in the same vein as Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians. There's a decent skeleton to the story here, but would have greatly benefited from having more time in the oven.

It's been a while, but I'm back on the wagon (reading The Dresden Files). I was halfway through when I realized I already read this entry but, hey, never hurts to have a refresher before diving into unexplored territory. Though this is one of the weaker entries, it's still fun and loose for the reasons why I loved the series in the first place. It's popcorn entertainment that still has compelling emotional beats and introspection, my kind of brainrot.

A really good epistolary novel that gets a bit frustrating at times for not trusting the reader enough to grasp subtext. There's a small, but prominent, subplot regarding unsent letters that feels like it's cheating the narrative to explain things that can already be understood through the sent letters, creating a sense of mystery and tension that ends up being both predictable and softens the blow of the ending. Other than that, though, it's a decent read!

Get Out is undoubtedly a 5/5 film with a 5/5 screenplay, but I'm knocking half a star off due to the presentation here. I would imagine that the main reason someone would pick up a screenplay book like this, which includes annotations by Jordan Peele explaining his writing decisions, is to learn how a script is written. This book commits a disservice to those readers by changing the screenplay format into a theatre script. Maybe it's due to making it easier to format (there's stills from the movie integrated throughout the book), or maybe it's simplifying the presentation for readers who would find it too challenging to read a properly formatted script, but I think it hurts both the lifespan and novelty of the book. If someone wants to learn how to write a screenplay from this book, they're not going to learn anything substantial here if it's the first script they've read.

That said, the actual content of the book is fantastic. Not only for the aforementioned annotations making economical use of its small space, but Tananarive Due's essay opening the book does an amazing job setting the tone of why Get Out is important enough to be printed and held in your hands. It's great memorabilia if you love the film and a great read if you're an intermediate writer. For novice writers, I would look for a PDF of the actual script.