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Alas, “survival of the fittest” would not be a concept that worked out for Rex.

The Illustration Friday theme of the week is “survival,” so…

This was of the funnest books I can remember reading in a long time. Gripping, funny and told in a totally original and authentic voice you can’t help but be hooked in by this part-Apollo 13, part-Castaway survival story.

Mark Watney is an astronaut, part of the third manned mission to Mars. Six days after landing on Mars a fierce dust storm forces Mark and his crewmates to abandon the planet. However during the evacuation Mark is left behind. Now he must work out how is going to survive on Mars until the next resupply mission. In two years time.

The majority of the book is told via Mark’s log entries detailing his survival. The log is written in a beautifully sarcastic tone where outright panic is only a hair’s breath away. There is plenty of self-deprecating humour and the log format works perfectly in detailing Mark’s day-to-day survival.

Mark is completely stranded. He has no way of communicating with his crewmates or NASA. He only has enough food and water to last half the time he needs. Mark puts to work his skills as an engineer and botanist to figure out if he can survive. The how is one of the most entertaining reads you will come across. Full of insane (but practical) problem solving you are glued to the book wanting to find out how Mark gets himself out of each new predicament he finds himself in. I defy anyone to be able to put this down once they start!

Buy the book here…

• If you enjoy great world-building
• If you enjoy meeting strong heroines
• If you enjoy survivor or disaster novels
• If you enjoy dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction
• If you like darker stories with some horror elements

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

I’m kind of scared to read Ice Dogs by Terry Lynn Johnson because I will be worried that something bad happens to the dogs, but I am fascinated by the premise.  Long wait on this one!

Hits stores February 2014

What are you waiting on?

Yep!  I did it!  I made it through another colonoscopy with flying colors!  I will let you in on a little survival secret.  How to drink the yucky liquid without tossing your cookies.

Try this method.  This is all you need:

1.  9 – 8 oz paper cups with straws

2.  “The drink”

3.  A timer

4.  A computer and the Pinterest website

My colonoscopy required me to drink 9 glasses of “the drink”.  One glass every 10 minutes!   EEeeeek!

Simply pour the liquid into the 9 cups. Next, go to the Pinterest website. Most of you who know Pinterest, know, that it is a great sucker of time. That is what you want,  you want to be taken away to Pinterest Land and lose track of what you are doing until the timer goes off! Soon you will be ready for cup #2, then #3 and on to # 9!   Viola!  You are done!  Thank you Pinterest!!!! …. and yes,  everything came out just fine!  haha!

By Thomas P. Beresford, M.D.

Psychological treatment studies that did not measure the maturity of psychological adaptive mechanisms in cancer patients have reported conflicting cancer survival results. Widely publicized studies noted increased survival rates among cancer patients who underwent psychotherapeutic treatment. However, more recent multicenter study could not replicate improved survival after behavioral treatment, and other studies have reported similarly conflicting results. Since published reports suggest that patients likely to benefit from psychotherapies are generally those with the most psychological maturity, it seems possible that the underlying health of psychological adaptive mechanisms may be related to cancer survival.

To our knowledge, prior to our 2006 report, psychological adaptive mechanism maturity had not been considered as affecting cancer survival either in behavioral-treatment studies or in trials of antidepressants. In that report we used measures of both depression symptom frequency and psychological adaptive mechanism maturity to assess what, if any, relationship each bore on survival probability in cancer patients. On the basis of previous studies of depression and ego-adaptation, we believed that “Immature” adaptive styles and frequent depression symptoms would independently predict lower survival rates. Then we studied 86 consecutive, mostly late-stage, cancer outpatients for up to 5 years; their survival data were analyzed in relation to the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ) scores at study entry. Cumulative survival probability curves contrasted the extreme cases: the most (N = 15) to the least (N = 21) depressed, and the “immature” (N = 14) to the “mature” (N = 16) adaptors. Depression did not separate the groups until 30 months after diagnosis. (Figure 1) 

Figure 1: Five-Year Cumulative Survival Probability by Maturity of Adaptive Styles

Psychological adaptive mechanism (ego defense) style separated them at 8 months; by 18 months, the Immature survival probability had dropped to 50%, versus 87% for the Mature. At 36 months, survival probabilities were 19% and 57%, respectively. This study suggested further clinical attention toward psychological adaptive mechanism maturity and immaturity as a potentially strong indicator of distress and lowered survival in cancer patients. It also indicated that the maturity of adaptive mechanisms must be taken into account in both medicinal and behavioral treatment trials of cancer patients since underlying difficulty may be more related to poor adaptation rather than traditional psychopathological constructs like depression.

Figure 2: Algorithm for the Assessment of Psychological Adaptive Mechanisms

While previous methods, such as the DSQ, offer a relative convenience, they are crude measures of these complex phenomena and can only be used in studies that compare groups of individuals in contrast to each other. The recognition algorithm approach aims at a specific assessment of respective individuals in a here-and-now setting. This approach can be used both in clinical assessment and treatment as well as in research studies that seek to characterize groups of patients, such as those presenting with use of Immature adaptive mechanisms who present with much lower likelihoods of cancer survival.

Other research indicates that psychological adaptive mechanisms occur naturally in graded steps that reflect increasing brain development from birth through early adulthood. Conversely, however, complex behaviors of this kind that utilize many brain tracts, including frontal lobe functions, may theoretically be lost when brain function decreases or when stress is overwhelming, as may be the case of the stress of cancer illness in the setting of the less flexible mechanisms. Neurodegenerative changes following radiation treatment of neoplasms in the brain, for example, may result in impaired functioning modulated by the fronto-subcortical tracts, including judgment, motivation, and executive planning functions.  Alternatively, overwhelming stress reactions can result in lowered adaptive mechanism maturity, such as that seen in some cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Much remains to be learned in the interaction between humans and the illnesses that they encounter; the psychological adaptation model offers one new approach to both clinical and empirical understanding.

Dr. Thomas P. Beresford is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the author of Psychological Adaptive Mechanisms: Ego Defense Recognition in Practice and Research. Trained in psychiatry at The Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School, he has focused his clinical and scientific career on the psychiatric problems that medical and surgical patients encounter, whether in adjusting to illness or in returning to normal brain functioning.

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• If you like survival-catastrophe-thrillers 
• If you don't mind a little teen drama (high school stereotypes abound)

If you're reading this on a site (other than Becky's Book Reviews or Becky's feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

• If you enjoy post-apocalypse fiction
• If you enjoy survival/action/adventure stories
• If you like horror novels or thrillers

If you're reading this on a site (other than Becky's Book Reviews or Becky's feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

May Contain Spoilers

From Amazon:

Review:

When it comes to manga lately, I feel like I’ve been living under a rock.  I received this review copy, and wasn’t familiar with the title at all.  I love the cover, though, with the main protagonist standing defiantly, yet a bit battered, and staring boldly ahead.  The cover is very simple and eye-catching, and I immediately sat down to read the book.  Keiko Suenobu is also the author of LIFE, which was being released by  Tokyopop before they shuttered their offices.  I haven’t read any of that series, but after reading Limit, I am tempted to track it down.

Limit is a Lord of the Flies type story.  After their school trip goes horribly wrong and their bus crashes, Kanno and four of her classmates are stranded in the middle of the woods with only their wits to aid in their survival.  With their teachers and classmates dead, the five girls must juggle their fear and panic with their feelings for each other.  This is a diverse group of personalities, from the bullied Morishige, who has the only weapon and is brimming over with hate and resentment, to Kanno, who was part of the popular clique who made Morishige’s life hell at school.  Sakura, the ringleader of the clique, is dead in the bus, and Haru, one of the survivors, isn’t dealing with her best friend’s death very well.  This is a powder  keg of emotions just ready to blow, and only Kamiya realizes that it’s going to take more than luck to survive until they are rescued.  She immediately attempts to use diplomacy and get everyone to work together to ensure their survival, but she’s not having much luck.  There is a lot of resentment and so much ill-will to overcome, that things look bleak for our intrepid cast.

Limit focuses on the complex relationships the girls have formed over the years.  Angry Morishige is delighting in her sudden ascent to the top of the food chain; she’s got the weapon, and she hates everyone enough that she won’t hesitate to use it.  She casts everyone else in the pyramid beneath her, leaving Kanno and Haru to battle it out for the bottom rung of the ladder.  With the weapon, Morishige also controls the meager food supply the girls have foraged from the wreckage of the bus.  After being a bottom-feeder for so long, she is ecstatic to feel some kind of empowerment over the girls who constantly picked on her and made each school day so horrible. 

I thought that this was a great introduction to the series.  I reached the end and wanted more.  The relationship dynamics bubble with emotion and kept me engaged in the book from the first page.  Kanno isn’t an extremely likable character because she always takes the path of least resistance.  She’s a sheep to Sakura’s domineering personality, and once Sakura meets an untimely end, Kanno realizes how meaningless her other relationships truly are.  Avoiding confrontation, kissing up to Sakura, and trying to hold a middle ground so she wasn’t bullied didn’t endear her to her classmates, she is learning the hard way.

I love Keiko Suenobu’s expressive artwork.  I never had to guess how her characters felt as they were maneuvered from one panel to the next.  Emotions are deftly rendered here, and the visuals are as compelling as the prose.  This is a great start to a series that will appeal to fans of conflict driven stories.  I don’t know how the girls are going to reconcile their feelings for each other and still survive all alone in the wilderness, with no food and only a cave for shelter.  I am looking forward to the next volume!

Grade:   B

Review copy provided by publisher

• If you like dystopias OR post-apocalyptic fiction
• If you like coming of age stories
• If you like survival/adventure stories 

If you're reading this on a site (other than Becky's Book Reviews or Becky's feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: August 22, 2012

James Dashner

The Kill Order, prequel to James Dashner’s bestselling series The Maze Runner trilogy, is here!

James Dashner was born and raised in Georgia but now lives and writes in the Rocky Mountains. He talked to us about The Maze Runner series and the books and movies that inspire his writing. He is also the author of the 13th Reality series.

Bianca Schulze: Before we begin talking up your highly anticipated prequel The Kill Order, can you give a little overview of The Maze Runner trilogy?

James Dashner: The Maze Runner trilogy is a story of a devastated future, and teenagers thrown into a terrifying experiment for mysterious reasons that are discovered as you go throughout the books. I think it’s a mix of adventure, mystery, and horror.

BS: Without giving anything away—as if you would—what can readers expect from The Kill Order? I’ve heard we should expect the unexpected.

JD: I’m excited for people to read it because my fans will get to see, firsthand, just how the world got into such bad shape and the reason the trilogy needed to exist in the first place.

BS: Each book within the trilogy is different, but all act as a piece of a larger puzzle. For readers that may be new to The Maze Runner series (blasphemy) and end up with the prequel in their hands, what should they do? Put it down and start The Maze Runner? Or should they go ahead and read it anyway and continue on with the trilogy upon completion?

JD: Oh, I definitely think people should read the trilogy first, no doubt. I think both the trilogy and the prequel will be more satisfying if done in that order.

BS: You have said that Lord of the Flies (one of my all-time favorite books) inspired your trilogy: “Instead of degenerating into animals, I wanted [the characters] to become more organized, more lawful, more determined, never losing hope. I hope that’s really how humans would react.” Did you have this thought prior to beginning the series while you wer