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January 03
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Mitch
is currently reading:
Appaloosa (Paperback)
by
Robert B. Parker
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
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Mitch
gave  to:
North River: A Novel (Hardcover)
by
Pete Hamill
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my rating:
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read in December, 2008
Mitch said:
"Wishing it was possible to give a book, like, 11 stars. This is a wonderful novel.
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Mitch
added:
Dune (Audio CD)
by
Frank Herbert
bookshelves:
gave-up-without-finishing
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my rating:
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read in January, 2009
Mitch said:
"I started listening to this while exercising on the treadmill. I've read it a half-dozen times, but not recently. First impressions: The breeding program to separate "humans" from "animals" seems sinister in a book written less th...more
I started listening to this while exercising on the treadmill. I've read it a half-dozen times, but not recently. First impressions: The breeding program to separate "humans" from "animals" seems sinister in a book written less than 30 years after World War II. Very interesting mix of East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Western themes.
Later: OK, I've given up on this. I guess I read this enough times already. (less)
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October 13, 2008
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Mitch
gave  to:
Marsbound (Hardcover)
by
Joe Haldeman
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my rating:
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read in October, 2008
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October 05, 2008
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Mitch
gave to:
Saturn's Children (Hardcover)
by
Charles Stross
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my rating:
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read in September, 2008
Mitch said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Freya is a sexbot, created to look like a beautiful woman and provide escort services to human masters. But she has a problem: The human race became extinct c...more
Don't be put off by the awful cover. This is a smart, funny, bawdy space opera.
Freya is a sexbot, created to look like a beautiful woman and provide escort services to human masters. But she has a problem: The human race became extinct centuries ago, before she was manufactured. This novel follows her adventures as she tries to find a purpose in life and make a living throughout the solar system, from Venus to the far-off planets beyond Pluto.
Like many of the best comedies, "Saturn's Children" has a serious thread running through it, about free will and obedience and power. When we learn, midway through, how the robots came to be created, the revelation is appalling, and makes us wonder whether the human race deserves to be dead.
This novel has a lot of fun in-jokes running through it. It's a pastiche of Heinlein's work, specifically his later novels, specifically Friday, which also features a beautiful heroine who was created artificially to serve humans. And it has lots of winks and wordplay on Internet memes too; for example, blogger John Scalzi, who's written a bit about Creationism, makes a posthumous cameo -- in the world of Saturn's Children, the crackpots are the ones who believe in evolution, because the races of robots really were created. (less)
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August 19, 2008
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Mitch
gave  to:
Spook Country (Hardcover)
by
William Gibson
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my rating:
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read in July, 2008
Mitch said:
"I had trouble with this one. The premise is great, summed up in an ad slogan for the novel that I remember but can't locate on the Web -- the novel was published in 2007, but it's so futuristic that it could only take place in 2006.
Spoo...more
I had trouble with this one. The premise is great, summed up in an ad slogan for the novel that I remember but can't locate on the Web -- the novel was published in 2007, but it's so futuristic that it could only take place in 2006.
Spook Country fleshes out famous quote Gibson made years earlier: The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
We see a lot of marvels using real-world cutting-edge technology from today. An artist creates "geolocative" art, using 3-D images overlaid over reality. Various mysterious figures are tracking a cargo container that moves from one ship to another in the ocean, never reaching land. A Chinese-Cuban illegal immigrant works in a family business in New York, practicing spycraft techniques that a Soviet agent taught his father.
Gibson makes perfectly mundane things like Wi-Fi and the chirpers that turn off car alarms seem exotic and science-fictional.
The problem with the novel is that it never really came alive. I was standing outside, looking in, throughout. The characters really have nothing at stake, nothing to lose that we or they care about, and so I didn't really get involved. Gibson said in an interview with the blog io9.com: "In Pyncheon you're never allowed to believe in the characters. He's making moves all the way through to remind you that these are cartoons. I have a little bit of that. I don't want people to be completely sucked into the mechanism. They should remember that they're riding on a rollercoaster." That pretty much sums up my problem with Spook Country.
(less)
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July 28, 2008
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Mitch
gave to:
The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2)
by
Anne Rice
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my rating:
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read in January, 1987
Mitch said:
"I read this book in the 80s, and it just knocked me off my feet. It plays around with an unreliable narrator -- like Huckleberry Finn describing Tom Sawyer, Lestat opens this novel by saying that Louis the vampire told a lot of lies in writing about ...more
I read this book in the 80s, and it just knocked me off my feet. It plays around with an unreliable narrator -- like Huckleberry Finn describing Tom Sawyer, Lestat opens this novel by saying that Louis the vampire told a lot of lies in writing about Lestat in "Interview With The Vampire." And I loved the idea that a person from Enlightenment France would feel right at home two centuries later in 20th Century America, with its fast-moving technology and pop culture. Lestat is a high-speed bloody romp through two centuries of American and European history, looking backwards to a vampire civilization as old as civilization. The rest of the vampire novels get progressively worse, I read one or two more and then stopped, but this book is wonderful. (less)
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July 23, 2008
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Mitch
gave  to:
Jhegaala (Vlad Taltos, #11)
by
Steven Brust
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my rating:
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read in January, 2009
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July 03, 2008
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Mitch
gave to:
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life (Hardcover)
by
Steve Martin
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my rating:
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Mitch said:
"Very entertaining and occasionally insightful memoir into what it was like to spend ten years as a struggling comic and writer, and then become a rock star overnight, *filling* major sports stadiums with tens of thousands of screaming fans. And then ...more
Very entertaining and occasionally insightful memoir into what it was like to spend ten years as a struggling comic and writer, and then become a rock star overnight, *filling* major sports stadiums with tens of thousands of screaming fans. And then walk away from it overnight. (less)
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July 02, 2008
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Mitch
marked as to-read:
Little Brother (Hardcover)
by
Cory Doctorow
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
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