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August 16
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Raja99
gave
 
to:
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (Paperback)
by Scott McCloud
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my rating:
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Raja99
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to:
Mission of Gravity (Paperback)
by Hal Clement
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New comment on Raja99's review of
Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man (Encyclopedia Brown Books)
(see all 3 comments)
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August 15
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Raja99
gave
to:
Dune (Dune Chronicles #1)
by Frank Herbert
bookshelves:
hardcover-h,
mcpl
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my rating:
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read in August, 2008
Raja99 said:
"This was the SFDG book for August 14 2008.
This is at least the fourth time I have read Dune. I have a strong love/hate relationship with the book. I really don't know how to rate it.
Influence on SF? Obvious 10 out of 10.
Cleverness of...more
This was the SFDG book for August 14 2008.
This is at least the fourth time I have read Dune. I have a strong love/hate relationship with the book. I really don't know how to rate it.
Influence on SF? Obvious 10 out of 10.
Cleverness of the Butlerian Jihad and Navigation issues? 10 out of 10.
Prose style? Starts about 7 out of 10 and reaches 9 (or even 10) out of 10 by the end.
Cleverness of the "politics" (in which every faction praises itself for subtlety): 3 out of 10. Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan would have these guys for breakfast.
Ethicality of the book's stance on (ecological) conservation? 3 out of 10.
Verisimilitude (or surface plausibility) of all the elements that make up the book: 10 out of 10
Plausibility of all the elements that make up the book if you stop and think about them: 4 out of 10.
Annoyance factor of all the "unbreakable 'laws'" that are broken without any consequence in the book: 10 out of 10.
I enjoyed Dune more this time through than any other time I've read it. The politics still seems clumsy, but we in the United States have shown ourselves to be at least this clumsy so far this century. I also think that spending lots of time (with my wife) watching recent, large-cast-of-characters TV shows (on iTunes or DVD! I hate broadcast!) has greatly improved my skills at keeping track of many characters. (As a kid, I'd confuse the Mentats, and had trouble keeping Gurney and Duncan apart. I was also surprised to see depths to Count Fenring and his wife.)
Other things that surprised me this time through: How little we see Duncan, given his tremendous importance in Herbert's sequels; it makes me wonder if he was Herbert's Mary Sue. Also, Dune is praised for its early and strong ecological themes; I was shocked to see how blithely our "heroes" dream of completely destroying the ecology of Arrakis. (My friend Gregory pointed out that I should not mistake "ecology" for "conservation".)
Okay, so this is probably my least coherent review--but that's an accurate reflection of how conflicted I am about this book.
(Finished rereading for at least the 4th time 2008-08-14 around 18:00EDT. Did *not* reread all the appendices.)...less
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August 11
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Raja99
read and liked
Donovan's
review of Dune (Dune Chronicles #1):
"I had never read Dune. I can’t put my finger on exactly why I hadn’t read it; although, I do have a nebulous memory of picking it up and not being able to get in to it. I know for a fact that I’d read the closing line previously, which i...more
I had never read Dune. I can’t put my finger on exactly why I hadn’t read it; although, I do have a nebulous memory of picking it up and not being able to get in to it. I know for a fact that I’d read the closing line previously, which is something I never do prior to reading a book; so that is really odd, perhaps it was quoted in either the movie or the miniseries.
I do know people, a surprising number of people, who give Dune an almost Biblical reverence. It isn’t a selective grouping either. A totally random swath of people I’ve known have considered Dune to have had a very formative role in their growth; one, in particular, credits it with her move away from conservative religion. It is a really big deal to some people.
While I don’t feel like reading Dune changed my life, I did really enjoy it. I suspect I partially enjoyed it just due to contrast. I felt so unstimulated by the Foundation Trilogy that I was thrilled to read something where a “hero” was doing something. It allowed for the “I can change the world” fantasy transposition of reader and main character that I was missing in the Foundation books. I think that having a cast of characters who are active in the whole of the book was an important factor in drawing me into the story.
I also enjoyed it for the richness of the world. That’s where most of the “science” in this fiction was found, and I find myself more drawn to science as I mature. [In fact, I have been disappointed thus far; I want more science, less fiction.] I have to constantly remind myself while reading through the books on this list that these were, presumably, the first books to use these concepts. Frank Herbert made a universe, complete, from Space Guild to sand plankton. Even after years of reading other stories by authors who have done the same, I can still appreciate the depth of thought and idea behind Arrakis and its surrounding universe. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book which had as great a handle on the ecology of the world in which is was set; if I were pressed, I can only think of Grass by Sherri S. Tepper as coming close.
Equally impressive was his treatment of religion. I especially liked the appendices, which moved even deeper into the evolution of religion over time. Herbert’s answer to how religion [and culture] evolved over the millennia[s] since “Old Earth” is similar in concept to the answer Joss Whedon gave with Firefly. Herbert saw the future as blend of Middle Eastern and Western ways; Whedon’s future is China/America. Being that his focus was religious as opposed to say, economic, this is understandable. It may even have been more base than that. Possibly he chose that direction because Arrakis is most similar to our desert regions where Islam originated, but I think it has more to do with cultural impact than mere climatic coincidence.
I think one of the strongest elements is the writing itself. It’s very well written. Although I had been exposed to 2 movie versions of Dune prior to reading it, almost none of the previous imagery colored my mental image of what the characters and settings were supposed to look like. Weaker writing would have easily allowed my perceptions to be molded by the theatrical versions. I really hate when that happens. I don’t even know how I used to imagine Harry Potter looking before the movies came out. If Paul Atreides looks like anyone in my head that I’ve seen visually, I’d tell you he looks like this kid I went to school with [coincidentally named Paul Strange] [anybody remember that kid?] albeit much more attractive.
...less
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August 01
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Raja99
gave
to:
Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man (Encyclopedia Brown Books)
by Donald J. Sobol
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my rating:
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read in August, 2008
Raja99 said:
"I've read this book before; I'm not sure how many times. I hadn't planned on rereading it all now, but it was hard to stop.
I was surprised by how many times I remembered the critical clue before I reread it. The only story where I didn't remember...more
I've read this book before; I'm not sure how many times. I hadn't planned on rereading it all now, but it was hard to stop.
I was surprised by how many times I remembered the critical clue before I reread it. The only story where I didn't remember the critical clue at all was the ninth, "The Case of the Murder Man"; for that one, I actually reread it, trying to figure it out. I'm not sure whether I did figure it out, or whether reading it twice reminded me.
(Finished 2008-07-31 17:22 EDT.)...less
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July 30
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New comment on Username's review of
Hardcase (A Joe Kurtz Novel)
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July 28
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Raja99
gave
to:
Up Till Now: The Autobiography (Hardcover)
by William Shatner, David Fisher
bookshelves:
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my rating:
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read in July, 2008
Raja99 said:
"When I was young, I was a pretty fanatical Star Trek fan. As I got older, I grew disenchanted, for many of the reasons Martin Luther grew disenchanted with Catholicism ;-). Right now (mid-2008), I find it a little hard to work up enthusiasm fo...more
When I was young, I was a pretty fanatical Star Trek fan. As I got older, I grew disenchanted, for many of the reasons Martin Luther grew disenchanted with Catholicism ;-). Right now (mid-2008), I find it a little hard to work up enthusiasm for Trek, though I'm sure I'll get my enthusiasm back in the future.
I'm interested enough to keep "up to date" with Shatner's memoirs, however, at least in part because I loved the movie Free Enterprise.
I hadn't heard of this book until I saw in in an SFBC flyer. It's available on the Kindle for the canonical price ($10), but I'm pretty disenchanted with my Kindle. (Either the two most recent [bestselling!] books I bought have defective formatting or my Kindle's broken.) I was happy enough to add myself to the (long) waiting list at my public library.
When I finally got my copy, I dipped in at several spots. It seemed enjoyable (Shatner is quite a raconteur, at least in collaboration) but fairly disjointed. I read perhaps 30% of it, then put it aside (e.g., to read Neuromancer, our SFDG book for July 17). After I finished Neuromancer, I started rereading The Martian Inca. As the deadline for returning Up Till Now to the library loomed, I went back to it, deciding to start from the beginning and go straight till the end.
If you start from the beginning, the book isn't quite as disjointed; at least, not at first. It does suffer from Shatner being all-too-willing to digress, sometimes for many pages. (I'm like that in my speech, but I'm disciplined in my writing. At least, I hope so.) The lack of organization hurts the book; for instance, the first six pages are spent detailing the many different ways Shatner considered starting the book. Yes, it's cute, but I found it annoying enough that I was relieved when the actual autobiography started on page 7. (And yes, I'm aware that that may have been the goal, but my politics of prose are such that I believe in not wasting the reader's time [to paraphrase Larry Niven] and that it's best to leave out the parts people skip [to paraphrase Elmore Leonard].)
Once the main story started it was quite amusing, and it was nice to learn about Shatner's childhood and very early career; I don't recall them being addressed in his memoirs with Chris Kreski. Things went well, apart from some annoying multi-page digressions (most of which appear at the start of a new chapter) until the 1970s or so, when chronology got pretty random again, and things got repetitive.
How does this differ from the books with Kreski? It's closer to an autobiography in that it talks about his childhood and early life. Also, he spends more time on non-Star Trek-related work; while he bends over backwards to say that he's grateful for the opportunities Trek gave him (and he's in awe of the multi-billion-dollar industry it's spawned), he's at least as proud of his other work (which includes winning Emmies elsewhere). Finally, he talks about his marriages, and takes half the blame for each of their failures. Except for his marriage to Nerine, who he reveals as an alcoholic that he married without understanding what that would entail. (He also reveals that Leonard Nimoy was an alcoholic, and that Nimoy tried to warn him.) Nerine's death seems clearly to have been an accident brought on by too much drinking, but Shatner is aware that some people will insist on conspiracy theories.
Overall, I very much enjoyed the book, but get the feeling that it needed to more time to edit and organize. If I had the shelf space I'd buy it in a heartbeat. As it is, I'll seriously consider it for the future.
(Finished 23:52EDT 2008-07-27. 342 pages, not counting the index [which I did not read].)...less
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July 22
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Raja99
gave
to:
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (Hardcover)
by Kate Wilhelm
bookshelves:
beba
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Hard SF
— 34 members
— last activity 02/03/2008 04:13PM
