Liz,

will you go on to read the next book in this series of 6, Speaker for the Dead? If you haven't, I recommend it highly. Speaker does all the things I have been trying to do in my professional writing.

Oh yes, I have read Speaker for the Dead and I actually think Speaker is a much better book, I just happened to be browsing through the "books everyone should read once" because I'm looking for something good to read while Karl and I are in Thailand (going there for our honeymoon July 15-August 10). While browsing I saw Ender's Game and voted. Ender's Game is a great fun read, but Speaker to me is the real story that he was trying to write, and it's where the complexity of our worlds and how we relate to each other really comes into play. Speaker for the Dead would probably be on my top 10 books list, if I made such a list. I haven't read Xenocide, or Children of the Mind but I plan to someday. Hope all is well.

Try the three books by John Burdett: Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tatoo, and Bangkok Haunts. The genre is "detective stories." The lead character is the last non-corrupt detective in Bangkok who vies to be a good Buddhist. His mother is a former sex worker and his father is a former Vietnam War vet. The books are great fun with a bit of meditation on the difference between East and West. Check out my reviews of the three books.

Your trip is a great plan for a honey moon. I am envious.

thanks! I actually have a secret love for detective stories. When I was younger I used to fantasize about being Nancy Drew (without always needing to be rescued at the end of course :)). I read your review and they seem like the perfect books for the trip. Karl and I are pretty excited about our trip too. We want to have children soon so we figured that if we didn't take a trip like this now, we may not be able to do it for a while. And when we talked about going somewhere thailand just popped out of both of our mouths. We're going to Cambodia and Vietnam at the end of our trip too, but just for a couple of days.