Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game Enjoyable enough, if somewhat predictable. Don't know that I'll read anything else by the author, though.
i think i'm probably the only guy i've known who couldn't get into this book. it seemed endlessly contrived -- not in the way that a lot of science fiction is, constructs that are somewhat implausible but still resonate because they touch on such common elements of the human condition. maybe it was because Ender was so young?!? 23 pages and into the bin.
I made it to the end (skimming some of the predictable parts) , but didn't like it any more than you did. iIRC Superdave is also on record as not digging it either. I can see how some SF fans would like it, but it's not what I enjoy in that particular genre.
It certainly wasn't my favourite (and wasn't overly believable) but when taken for what it was (and read in just a few days), it wasn't so very bad either. I remember having gotten through much more tedious SciFi in my life (including certain "classics").
i think i liked particular authors: Le Guin, Clifford Simak, Heinlein, A. E. Van Vogt(short stories, mostly), Asimov to a lesser degree, Joe Halderman, Larry Niven. tried reading Cherryh. ugh. Poul Anderson. meh. Zelazny. not so much, and he's from Ohio. go figure.
I liked Ender's Game because of the uniqueness of the character. I've always been a bit of a naive reader, I tend to lose my sense of disbelief easily, so I don't tend to analyze much and just roll with the story. When read that way, Ender's game is wonderfully engaging because the character becomes very very sympathetic, I thought (It's been a long time, I read it not long after it came out). With that said, Card has turned out to be a bit of a crappy human being from what I can tell. I hate that I've learned that in recent years, because I wanted to go see the film in the theaters... I'll probably just wait for it to show up on Netflix so I don't spend direct money on it.
"Inferno" Dan Brown. I'm a few chapters into this right now and not sure if I'll get much further. It's way past my limits of suspended disbelief already. Seems to do his name dropping thingy with every page. Run across the Palazzo Vecchio, Hide under the swinging dick of David, (Perhaps not, David isn't that well hung ) hide in the Boboli Gardens, sort of narration. Being chased by a secret, private organization that tell the Italian police what to do and shoots anyone... just because. The organization wants to spread some sort of virus that will kill 90% of the population to stop global population explosion. Of course they're immune. And now we're off to the Vatican. After all the Catholic's hate birth control................Oh my.
Was not a fan of that book. Not only did it seem pretentious, but it also got boring. I read a review prior to buying and it mentioned it as a fun read (overrated) which had a pseudo discussion on overpopulation. This part of the book had massive potential, but severely lacked and I found it disappointing.
The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien ‘Why should anybody steal a watch when they can steal a bicycle?’ Good, but not as funny as At Swim-Two-Birds
I started on "Transatlantic" Colum McCann. last night. A really well written trilogy of three Atlantic crossings. (Going back east!) I finished the first book/story and loved it. The First nonstop flight over the Atlantic. (N0, it wasn't Limberger.. From Amazon: "Newfoundland, 1919. Two aviators—Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown—set course for Ireland as they attempt the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, placing their trust in a modified bomber to heal the wounds of the Great War. Dublin, 1845 and ’46. On an international lecture tour in support of his subversive autobiography, Frederick Douglass finds the Irish people sympathetic to the abolitionist cause—despite the fact that, as famine ravages the countryside, the poor suffer from hardships that are astonishing even to an American slave. New York, 1998. Leaving behind a young wife and newborn child, Senator George Mitchell departs for Belfast, where it has fallen to him, the son of an Irish-American father and a Lebanese mother, to shepherd Northern Ireland’s notoriously bitter and volatile peace talks to an uncertain conclusion."
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss A friend lent me this first volume in a fantasy series. The tone is a little more literary than I am used to, and I am enjoying it so far.
Bernard Bailyn -- The Barbarous Years Bailyn was the first historian I read as an historian, in that I was very aware that his premise in The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution was his. Everything else up to my 11th grade AP US History class was just history sans thesis. I also just presumed over the years that he was dead, so imagine my surprise when I saw a review. I don't buy too much on the Nook, but this was a midnight purchase and I look forward to starting this over the weekend, when the wife and kids are gone and I'll have a dozen hours to just sit and read.
James Weldon Johnson -- Along This Way I'm about 60% through Johnson's autobiography and have finished the remainder of this collection. Johnson had an incredibly wide range of talents. What an amazing man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Weldon_Johnson
Finally finished the longest book I've ever read outside of the Bible. At 1031 pages, What it Takes by Richard Ben Cramer. It is political history of the 1988 U. S. Presidential campaign. It is very much about the personal life experiences of the candidates more than the political machinery, though that can't help but be part of it. You watch as the human being who is trying to make sure their sick kid is being taken care of, or finding an apartment for his family to live in for the years they will spend in Iowa, shopping, etc. is slowly whittled away by our Presidential election system to become a single identity of barely functioning human called: Candidate. It is the hollowing out of the person to be filled with the nation's hopes, dreams, fears, etc. Cramer's thesis is this: We do not elect based on ideology, that's the reason for the extreme members of each side of the spectrum. The vast middle who really decide end up looking for one thing that our system delivers (or can't help but be the result of our system, so we buy it because that's what we have left): The person whom we believe will give their self over to us: mind, body and soul. They have to be willing to completely end their life from before to become wholly consumed by being Candidate For President. They do that by setting aside whatever ethics that are needed to Do Whatever It Takes, because then we believe they will do the same for the nation. I'm not 100% convinced by his thesis, but it is definitely true that the effect on the humans who run is profound and surely appears to leave them a hollowed shell of their former self.
Cramer (RIP) was a great writer. His bios of Ted Williams and, especially, Joe DiMaggio, are fantastic.
My wife, bless her little cotton socks, brought this home from the library for me. I took it back same day thanking her profusely but didn't tell her I didn't open it. I did pick up one I'd had on order. The latest John Sandford book. "Silken Prey" I wish I could write like this guy. His latest Virgil Flowers (That fuckin' Flowers) book "Storm Front" is due for release in October. (On order)
The most enjoyable book I've read in a while! "For me" he is the best contemporary police/murder/and political thriller writer today. His storyline is realistic and doesn't stretch the limits of credibility. His characters stay in character and are believable. For me though, it's his dialog, complete with that police drop dead humour that they need or go crazy. The story gets to you from page one then gathers momentum. At times, near the end I found myself reading faster and faster, getting more and more into the tale. Solid ending that doesn't leave you with a flat WTF. Highly recommended.
Just tried to order Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel. "Never Look Back" Seems he's been discovered. The library list is up to 250 if I want on. Guess I'm going to have to spend money to read. I did notice that a lot of his books (and others) are listed as EBooks. I may even have to break down and look into that some more.
Memoirs - General William T. Sherman General Grant was a better writer. Sherman sometimes bogs down in details, but after he captures Atlanta, it gets more interesting.
[/URL] The Middle Sea by John Julius Norwich If you have any experience with Norwich's more famous works, such as A short History of Byzantium or A History of Venice, then you will have some idea of what a treat you have in store. This survey of the civilizations around the shore of the Mediterranean skips along like a (very) good comic novel except that it all actually happened.
The Damned United, by David Peace. A novelization of Brian Clough's 40-odd days as gaffer for Leeds United in the shadow of Don Revie. Great so far. I really like the jacket picture, esp. When I noticed that little trophy it looks like Leeds are nicking, more obviously here in the audiobook....
I have just embarked upon Wilbur Smith's, The Quest, having read River God, Warlock, and The Seventh Scroll already... River God is probably the book I have read the most times in my life, except for perhaps Rice's Interview With A Vampire, but I did go through an obsessive phase with her Vampire Chronicles, and Vampirism in general. That is to say, when I was 14-16 years of age, I would daydream poignantly about, say, being given the Dark Gift (made a vampire) myself, and then embarking upon my own, again, poignant, immortality. But that was a strange period for me when amongst other things I was questioning my sexuality and Mancini. To date I have never engaged in a homosexual act, and Mancini remains my favourite manager, I am thirty or so pages into The Quest and my impression is that Smith was tripping balls when he wrote the first chapter. This instalment in his "Egypt Series" is definitely more abstract, so to speak, than the first three novels, and Smith is clearly, for mind, trying to transcend guns and hairy chests and pussy, for a more poignant (third time) good vs evil, set up. Fairplay to him I'll report back once I have finished the book. My feeling is that I shall be finding portions tedious. But hey no one put a gun in my mouth and forced me to pick the book up. Actually, I've owned the book since the year it was published, just never got around to reading it.