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October 08
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Kim
is on page 10 of The Man in the High Castle
"I started this at work and just couldn't get into it so I'm taking a short break."
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Kim
is on page 195 of The Accidental Time Machine
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Kim
is currently reading:
The Accidental Time Machine (Hardcover)
by Joe Haldeman
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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progress:
(page 195 of 272)
— 2 days ago, 10:27AM
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October 01
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Kim
is currently reading:
The Man in the High Castle (Paperback)
by Philip K. Dick
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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progress:
(page 10 of 272)
"I started this at work and just couldn't get into it so I'm taking a short break."
— 2 days ago, 10:28AM
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Kim
gave
to:
Knife of Never Letting Go (Hardcover)
by Patrick Ness
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in October, 2008
Kim said:
"I don't get what all the fuss is about with this book. Sure, it had an interesting premise, set on a colonized world where it appears that all the women are dead, all the men can hear each other's every thought, and all the animals can talk. It als...more
I don't get what all the fuss is about with this book. Sure, it had an interesting premise, set on a colonized world where it appears that all the women are dead, all the men can hear each other's every thought, and all the animals can talk. It also has an interesting writing style, told from the point of view of Todd, a thirteen-year-old farm boy, exactly as he would have told it, complete with misspellings and grammatical quirks. But beyong that, I found very little to like about this book. It was relentlessly dark and violent. As I was reading I just kept hoping for some relief, but as Todd himself says, "Hope is making a dare to the world and when has the world every let us win a dare?"...less
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September 30
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New comment on Kim's review of
Old Man's War
(see all 2 comments)
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September 27
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Kim
read and liked
Mark's
review of Old Man's War:
""Old Man's War" by John Scalzi is one of the quickest reads I've had in a while. It's the epitome of a "page-turner" and for fans of military science fiction, you can't go wrong with this one. If the premise sounds interesting, ...more
"Old Man's War" by John Scalzi is one of the quickest reads I've had in a while. It's the epitome of a "page-turner" and for fans of military science fiction, you can't go wrong with this one. If the premise sounds interesting, you should read it. If you like military science fiction such as "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman or "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein, what are you doing reading this when you could be reading "Old Man's War"? Go and read it now!
The Plot
It's the FUTURE (no surprise, there) and there exists a human government entity apart from earth called the Colonial Union. The Colonial Union is defended by the Colonial Defense Forces (the CDF). The Earth has not yet achieved a one world government and the petty international squabbles of today still exist in this time. The Colonial Union, on the other hand, is a cohesive whole. It's easy for a bunch of separate colonies to band together if they're constantly struggling against other races for dominance.
The CDF recruits its soldiers from the elderly. When a human being is 65, they have the opportunity to sign a letter of intent for the CDF. Ten years later, if the human is still alive, they are inducted into the CDF military for a term of service lasting 10 years. One of the catches is that you have to sign away your citizenship on earth, and you become legally dead. Therefore, all of your money and possessions are lost forever and you can never come back to Earth. This effectively ends your relationship with your family and friends.
The reasoning is that the death rate for CDF soldiers is very high. The overwhelming majority of soldiers will die within the 10 years of their service. If you've already lived for 75 years, you're retired, doing nothing, and you know you probably don't have a lot of time left, going out with a bang seems a lot more attractive than if you're 20. Also, there's the rumors that the CDF has some kind of age reversal process because how can a bunch of 75 year olds be a competitive force in the universe?
The plot starts with a man named John Perry on his 75th birthday. He lives in a small town in Ohio. He and his wife signed up for the CDF when he turned 65 years old. Unfortunately, his wife died before she was able to sign up. He goes and visits her grave one last time, and then goes to the CDF office for induction.
The plot continues on from there.
The Good
This book was a great read. It's not an "important" book or a "literary" book. It's pulp science fiction with a brain and a heart. Any book where I find myself still reading it at 3 am in the morning and being surprised that it's so late (or early) is something I absolutely MUST recommend.
The plot is compelling. Scalzi's narrative hooked me in from the start and I couldn't stop. It's a familiar concept: a likeable everyman character signs up for the military, goes through boot camp, fights some battles, rises up in rank, other stuff happens and then the story ends. This has been done to death in science fiction. Therefore, for this book to be fascinating, Scalzi really had to have an original "slant" on this familiar plot. He does, it is, and it's great.
The characters are much better than the average "pulp" novel. They are good enough that you're never totally confused as to who is who. The aliens were also well done. I got the sense that this universe was full of weird aliens who were competing with us for space. It definitely makes sense that the only aliens who we would have a conflict with would be ones who consumed the same kind of basic resources (oxygen, carbon-based food) that we do.
As far as major philosophical points, there are enough to put some meat in the novel. Is war immoral if we're waging it not only to survive but to thrive in the universe. Do human rights extend to non-humans? Should they?
The Not-So-Good
The characters are good. However, they don't really change that much as people accross the novel. At one point in the narration, the protagonist, John Perry, laments the loss of humanity that he feels because of the constant fighting. Even though this concept is introduced, it's not explored enough, in my opinion.
I wish the philosophical implications of this universe were explored a little more, also. I wish there would have been some insights as to what can go wrong phychologically when a human goes through such physiological and situation changes that the characters went through. It's not that the novel doesn't address this at all, it does; just not to the degree I hoped it would.
I wish the aliens were a little more alien. There are some that have "odd" motivations, which is welcome and refreshing! However, others seem just like "star trek" aliens, which are basically humans with some kind of singular weird physical difference.
Conclusion
If you're a fan of military science fiction, you probably have already read this book. If you're a fan of pulp science fiction, for you I rate this book 5 stars. However, if you're a fan of the more philosophical stuff but are looking for a good, quick read, for you I rate this book 4 stars. It's a good read!...less
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Kim
gave
to:
Old Man's War (Mass Market Paperback)
by John Scalzi
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in September, 2008
Kim said:
""I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army." I was grabbed by this first sentence and by the end of page three, I was absolutely hooked with no way of wriggling free.
This story...more
"I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army." I was grabbed by this first sentence and by the end of page three, I was absolutely hooked with no way of wriggling free.
This story is set in the not too distant future where life on Earth seems to be fairly similar to what you and I are used to. Life away from Earth is another story entirely. The universe is Star Wars-like, filled with myriad intelligent species with body types and customs vastly different from our own, all vying for the scarce colonizable planets. The only way for an American citizen to get off Earth and into the stars is to join the Colonial Defense Forces--the army that fights for new planets and protects the colonies we already have. But the CDF doesn't want young, inexperienced recruits, they want soldiers who already have the experiences of a lifetime--you can't join until you turn seventy-five. Oh, and once you leave Earth, you can't come back.
Told from a first-person perspective, this is the rollicking ride of an old man leaving behind everything he's ever known to make his way through the ranks of the CDF towards hero-dom. Along the way he fights in every manner imaginable, from blasting giant spiders who hurl chunks of rock from planetary rings, to stomping beings only an inch tall with his boots, to trying to contain an intelligent slime mold that will digest you from the inside out given half a chance. It's fun and engrossing and I absolutely did not want to put this book down. It also had some deeper messages about love and marriage and what it means to be human, but it certainly never got too deep. This was a brain-optional good time!
Now if you would please excuse me, I'm going to go add every other book ever written by John Scalzi to my wish list!...less
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September 11
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Kim
gave
to:
Mission of Gravity (Paperback)
by Hal Clement
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in September, 2008
Kim said:
"In this book the author took the premise that there is a planet somewhere that is large and dense so that it has a huge amount of gravity compared to Earth, spins really quickly to partially offset that gravity with centrifugal force and therefore ha...more
In this book the author took the premise that there is a planet somewhere that is large and dense so that it has a huge amount of gravity compared to Earth, spins really quickly to partially offset that gravity with centrifugal force and therefore has a very flattened shape, and has a very elliptical orbit in which it is much closer to the sun at one end of the orbit than the other. He then imagined in great detail and with as great scientific precision as he could what conditions would be like on that planet and what sort of life forms would evolve there. With all that done, he set out to write a story taking place there. What an incredible case of world building! The story is mostly told from the point of view of one of the life forms on the planet, a Mesklinite, who is shaped similarly to a foot-long centipede with pincers. He is the captain of an oceangoing vessel from a home port that has days about 18 minutes long and a gravity about 700 times that of Earth's, where jumping, throwing and especially flying are unheard of. As an explorer, he sails his ship close to the equator where gravity is only 3 times that of Earth's and he meets a human being. The human is encased in armor to protect him from the gravity and atmosphere and asks the Mesklinite to voyage to the pole to retrieve a crashed research vessel from conditions which no human could possibly survive. And the adventure begins! This was definitely a fun think-if-you-want-to read. I really enjoyed the author's scientific explanation of the planet in the afterword. I was amazed by how much thought and research he put into this! True, published in 1953 some of the science is a bit out of date, but this was still really cool....less
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September 07
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Kim
read and liked
Emma's
review of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist:
"Novels written by two authors can go one of two ways: they can be really cool, or really bad. Happily, writers of young adult novels seem to have a knack for working in collaboration. "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" (from 2006) was wri...more
Novels written by two authors can go one of two ways: they can be really cool, or really bad. Happily, writers of young adult novels seem to have a knack for working in collaboration. "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" (from 2006) was written by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. Cohn wrote Norah's part and Levithan wrote Nick's part, but they are not really Nick and Norah.
The story starts in the middle of the night (or is it the beginning of the morning?) at a club on Ludlow Street in New York City. Nick is "the nonqueer bassist in a queercore band who is filling the room with undertone" as his band tears through their set. His life is seeming pretty great when Tris, The Ex, walks into the club. That's where Norah comes in.
Norah is "the daughter of an Englewood Cliffs-livin', fat-cat record company CEO" who happens to be in the right place at the exact time that Nick really needs a five-minute girlfriend. That also happens to be right when Norah needs to get a ride for her friend.
So it all kind of works out. It also sets the stage for the novel: a first date that makes it through the club scene in New York, a date where everything goes wrong (or maybe it goes right), a date that goes on and on--in a good way, mostly.
In other words, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" is a fast story. Events jump around and the prose moves just as quickly. Cohn and Levithan keep up this speed with their narratives (Nick and Norah get alternating chapters) which have the verve appropriate to a hip, teen novel.
Because this book really is firmly grounded in the Young Adult genre. Older readers who have an interest in music (or the upcoming movie) might be interested but the novel is very centered on teen concerns and interests. None of which is a bad thing since this is a YA novel.
The narrative here is really tight. Cohn and Levithan do a great job keeping the story coherent as they alternate chapters without getting redundant. I really like the style here. The duel narratives overlap enough that readers get to see key events from Nick and Norah's point of view. This technique helps to give a fuller version of the story as well as humorously showing how differently two people can see the exact same thing.
My only qualm with the novel is the language. There is a lot of cursing. That doesn't bother me ideologically, but it does start to seem over the top. About two thirds into the novel I started to wonder if anyone could really curse that much in day-to-day conversation (Norah is a self-proclaimed "potty mouth" to be fair), but maybe I just hung out with a different kind of set when I was younger.
"Nick and Norah's Playlist" is a crazy ride of a novel. It has music, borscht, romance, and some great dialogue. Readers familiar with Levithan's other novels ("Boy Meets Boy" to name one) will recognize his frank writing style here. I haven't read any of Cohn's other novels ("Gingerbread" to name one) but she's definitely on my watch list now. ...less
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Hey Kim,
