A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In my experience, YA books fall into a handful of categories: short books with remedial language intended as throw away entertainment, coming of age stories that identify with the readers experiences, and thinly veiled parables. However, that doesn't mean YA books can't be enjoyed, and I did enjoy this book. Don't let the 3 star rating fool you, it is really more of a 3.5. A Wizard of Earthsea, for me, falls in the parable category, but it isn't heavy handed at all.
I wish I would have read this prior to reading [b:The Name of the Wind|186074|The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)|Patrick Rothfuss|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1270352123s/186074.jpg|2502879] as it has many of the same concepts. The two books provide a very clear picture of the different of writing for a young audience and a mature audience. Rothfuss's world is so much richer. I really appreciated the afterword in Earthsea by Le Guin where she talks about her initial reticence to do a YA book, and how she approached it. It's nice to see that the author is consciously making certain decisions in the writing of the story.
In a few years, I'm sure I'll be recommending this book to my kids.
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Review: A Wizard of Earthsea
Review: The Dead of Night
The Dead of Night by John Marsden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I concluded my review of Tomorrow When the War Began with "I'm eager to see what happens next." Apparently I wasn't that eager, as it is now three years later and I'm just now finishing the second book in this series. This is a very brief episode wherein Ellie and her friends continue to adapt to life as guerrillas in an occupied nation. We get a bit more depth from each character, and the group goes on a few outings for both reconnaissance and attack. If you enjoyed the first book, you will certainly enjoy this one as well.
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Review: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I desperately wish this was a book that I could recommend, but I can't. I wish that the author built solid arguments based on proven research and logic. Instead, while I wholeheartedly agree with the main sentiment, I find myself at a loss at who I could recommend this to.
Last Child in the Woods sets out to demonstrate how the modern child, through a lack of interaction with nature, has experienced a development failure. In order to combat this problem, we must find ways to reintegrate our children with nature. There are tidbits of excellent advice based on research throughout, such as research that shows when children use all of their senses to absorb information they are much more likely to retain it. This is in contrast to our modern classroom environment where students are lectured to and observe examples on the board, then asked to repeat them at home. In this way, children are only experiencing one or two senses in tandem. Moving the learning environment outdoors exposes the child to all of their senses at once.
I was looking for this book to provide the following:
- A definition of the problem (identify specific developmental issues in children)
- A definition of the root cause (lack of exposure to nature), along with properly cited research to bolster that claim
- Proposals for addressing the root cause (public, private, and personal) as well as properly cited research that demonstrates how these efforts are effective
This type of structured argument is not found in this book. What the book does provide is unstructured rambling that tries to cover too much territory in too shallow of detail. It is for that reason that I can't take it to my local, state, and federal representatives. I can't recommend this book to the school board. Instead, I'm left with a book that appeals to me emotionally, but leaves me with no ammunition to argue that we should make broader efforts to expose our children to nature. If there is one element of the book that I would recommend, it would be the last 70 or so pages where Louv provides concrete recommendations on activities to undertake, community actions, and further reading.
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Review: Ship Breaker
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I've really enjoyed everything I have ready from Bacigalupi. He has a unique way of painting a poisoned future that you can believe is possible. Ship Breaker is the story of Nailer, a young boy working salvage on a beach near where New Orleans once stood. He is tormented by an abusive father and struggles just to make it through each day. Nailer is surrounded by inescapable poverty, yet just on the horizon he sees the beautiful ships of the wealthy elite who control, or ignore, his ship breaking outfit. Presented with a strange twist of luck, Nailer must make some very difficult choices between saving a life or making his own life easier.
This is categorized as a YA book. Most YA books are categorized as such because they are providing blunt exposition of a particular issue, like fitting in during your teen years, or dealing with early romance. Ship Breaker takes on a much more difficult topic: invisible privilege. Nailer is a member of an extremely poor underclass. When the privileged and wealthy are forced to recognize him, they are shocked to find that Nailer lacks privileges that they take for granted. Literacy, food, education, current events....all of these are unreliable if available at all to Nailer. From my own experience I know that it wasn't until I was late into my 20's that I became truly aware of the extent of invisible privilege and how it can work to prevent the poor from escaping poverty. Exposing youth to this concept could do a great deal of good.
I listened to the Audible audio book version of this story, which was available from my library. The narrator does a fantastic job of lending a unique voice to each character. Even without prompts I was easily able to tell which character was speaking. The only voices I struggled with were the slight difference between his Irish and Indian accents, but these characters were rarely in the same scene together.
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Review: I Am Legend
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'm sure I'm not alone in being first introduced to this story through the movie Will Smith starred in. I really enjoyed the movie, but I never felt compelled to invest in any of the other adaptations. Then my buddy Steve read the original Matheson tale and let me know that the book was significantly different from the movie, and well worth the read. When I found out the eBook was available from my library, I really didn't have any other excuses.
The story presents an excellent perspective on the concept of the last man. How long would your sanity hold if you knew you were utterly alone, and that every day the world was trying to kill you? How long would you persevere, and how could you maintain hope? This story is much less about the vampire and much more about the human.
This is a short book at just under 150 pages, almost a novella. Given the small time investment, I can easily recommend it.
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Review: Flashforward
Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'm really torn on how to rate this book. On the one hand, the concepts and science discussed here make for excellent thought experiments. Unfortunately, the social elements of the story telling leave a lot to be desired. Unless you had some cue to who the speaker was, you wouldn't be able to tell the dialogue of one character from the next. All characters have nearly identical voices throughout. In addition, the way these characters relate to one another is, well, bizarre to put it mildly. I had real trouble believing that people in real life would behave as the characters here. There is no character growth to speak of throughout. The female characters are largely immaterial to the story, acting as scenery or minor detail to a plot point.
Despite the poor attention to the human elements of the story, I did find myself eager to continue reading. While the book is a bit dated now, but it doesn't detract from the ideas. What would it mean for humanity to get a glimpse of the future? What would it mean to our scientific community? Is our future immutable, or do we truly have free will? These are questions we may never be able to definitively answer.
Overall, a decent read. There are a few more Sawyer books in my to-read queue. This one hasn't given me any reason to move them up or down in that list.
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Review: A Fire Upon the Deep
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A Fire Upon the Deep came highly recommended to me as one of the must read volumes in science fiction. It's easy to be let down when something comes along with such high praise, and that was the case for me. There were certainly quite a lot of elements that I enjoyed. I really enjoyed the way Vinge slowly introduces you to a new concept or element of the story without simply spelling it out for you explicitly. The subtle shift in the sex of pronoun usage and the way the tines are introduced really impressed me. There are some really interesting concepts here, and they are well realized within the story. On the other hand, the pace of this book is dreadfully slow. If you are looking for a high stakes, action / adventure story, this is not it. The ending really put me off, with the climax coming at a whimper rather than a bang. Overall, I liked the book, but it would not be in the short list of books I've recently read that I would recommend to folks with similar tastes.
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Review: The Strain
The Strain by Guillermo del Toro
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The first third of this story was really gripping. A plane lands at JFK, taxis part way to the terminal, and then goes completely dark. Unfortunately, once we move beyond the plane, the story devolves into a rather ordinary vampire story. There are a couple of ideas here that I hadn't seen before
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Review: Influx
Influx by Daniel Suarez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Suarez writes stories that I enjoy. Immensely. Influx is definitely keeping with that pattern. I love the concepts here, and it is easy to see how the themes apply in real life. The BTC regulates which technologies the world can have, and vanishes away any innovator who might provide the world with the next great leap forward. This agency may not really exist, but then I think about how some countries must view the USA. Our spy networks are unparalleled. Our technology fantastical. In addition, through trade agreements and tariffs, we largely regulate what technologies are available in some countries (for better or worse). In addition to this bit of introspection, I also came away with a healthy respect for the dangers of allowing an agency to have free reign to do as they please with a limitless budget. Of course, there is no such agency in the US that might have that sort of free discretion.
I'd highly recommend this book to most readers. It has quite a lot of action and some great insights into technologies that might just be around the corner. I read the first 100 pages or so as if the style were riffing on the humor of Men In Black. It got much darker, but I can definitely see a silver screen version of this film having some comical moments.
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Review: Crux
Crux by Ramez Naam
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the follow-up to Nexus, the book that introduced us to a drug that brought about the post-human. I felt that the first few chapters were like reading a sales pitch on the technology. All of these wondrous potential applications for Nexus are touched on, along with a few of the potential pitfalls. This isn't a terrible thing, but it did take me out of the story. The first half of the book does a lot of scene setting that the second half really cashes in on. If you've read the first book, definitely pick up this sequel!
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Review: Divergent
Divergent by Veronica Roth
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This.....was not a book for me. Everything was there that should have made it a good fit. There was the dystopian future, the reality bending simulations, the action of the main character's initiation, the comparisons to The Hunger Games. Unfortunately, it fell flat for me. There's a good bit of buzz surrounding the Divergent series, and with the movie coming out next month I wanted to read it before going to the theater to watch it. Now I'm wondering if I might just wait for it to come out on DVD.
There were a couple of things that put me off. First, I couldn't identify with Beatrice. When I was a teenager I was the rare bird who had a pretty solid idea of what I was going to do with my life. I was good at math and enjoyed tinkering with computers. Going into computer engineering was a pretty straight forward decision for me. I can see where this book would appeal to the YA crowd it is aimed at. Making decisions about a career and college before you turn 18 can be truly terrifying if you haven't already found what you want to do. Beatrice is looking for her aptitude test to tell her what faction she belongs in. If only life had some 30 minute quiz that could tell high schoolers what career to prepare for.
I also had an issue taking some of the concepts in the book seriously. Other reviewers here have touched on it, but I find the whole "Five factions representing five human qualities" concept pretty ludicrous. Furthermore, the idea that anyone who doesn't fit into one of these five tidy boxes becomes homeless and desperate seems pretty silly. Maybe the next book will discuss what lies outside the city and why this is so.
If I understood it correctly, all children of members of a faction in what's left of the city of Chicago must choose their faction at age 16. They become initiates in that faction and must earn their place. Given that, it seems strange that Beatrice's chosen faction only had what I counted to be something like 30 initiates to begin with. Let's just assume that each faction has the same number of initiates. That means that for the entire city of Chicago there are only 150 children that are 16 years old. Did the city have a massive die off? What's the point of setting up these faction if each will only have a few thousand people? I'm probably paying too much attention to details in what is meant to be YA book, but these are the sorts of disconnects that bothered me.
My wife has finished the next two books in the series, and it seemed like she struggled to get through them. I may eventually finish out the series as well, but given this first book I think the next two are going to be pretty low on my priority list.
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Review: The Postmortal
The Postmortal by Drew Magary
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
How would life change if there were a cure for aging? I love philosophical questions like this and all of the interesting scenarios and possibilities they lead to. This story is full of humor, sadness, anger, and remorse. It is told as if you are reading the blog posts of John Farrell, a lawyer who received the cure in his late twenties.
I waffled between giving this story 4 or 5 stars. It isn't perfect, but it hits all the right notes for me. I know I'm going to be talking about this one to anyone who will listen, which is why I left it at a 5.
Would all that extra time allow us to lead fuller lives? Or would we treat it like anything that we have in excess: with little value. Is our mortality a gift?
The greenies also seem sort of ludicrous to me. Internet trolls are looking to frustrate people for laughs. Physical harm isn't part of the repertoire. Sure, I could see independent individuals doing crazy things, but the description of the greenies indicates a collective behavior that I have trouble believing.
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Review: Dust
Dust by Hugh Howey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Excellent finish to the series! Howey's writing and structure has really progressed, and it shows here. The only disappointment I had with Shift was that there appeared to be too many pages dedicated to getting across a plot point. Dust is much tighter. The pacing and action are excellent.
That said, there are a number of elements that bother me. I've read them mentioned in other reviews, but I will voice my own here as well.
Next, the nanos themselves seem to have fluid rules. They are self-replicating, but somehow can't move beyond some unexplained barrier around the silos. They kill nearly instantly in high concentration, but the low concentrations outside can be balanced out with the "good" nanos. They don't stick to clothing at all, but if you are gassed on your way out as a cleaner they eat through immediately and kill you. They form a dome around the silos that the wind can't blow away and form a gray cloud in the sky...somehow. The nanos are tuned to human DNA, but also kill all of the wildlife and vegetation around the silos.
What about silo 40 and their kindred rebels? Donald bombed that area pretty extensively, but Anna and silo 40 appear to have infiltrated several silos. What happened there?
What about the other silos that were functioning as intended? With silo 1 gone are they all as good as dead? Permanently entombed? Immediately killed?
My wife kids me that being critical of this sort of stuff make a me a killjoy, that I should just suspend belief and enjoy the story. Fair enough, but it would still bug me if I didn't say it out loud (or write it).
If you've read the first two books, you definitely should read Dust. It is a great finish to the series. If you haven't read this series yet, start! I really enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone else who enjoys stories of the apocalypse.
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Review: The Lives of Tao
The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. The premise was so absurd that I was hoping for a bit of campy humor. Unfortunately, while there is some light humor, it took itself too seriously. Maybe I had poor expectations going in. I did find it entertaining, and I feel this story would make a fine series on SyFy. The ending sets up very well for a lead in to a series of Roen Tan novels, but I am not sure I will be following them.
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Review: Doctor Sleep
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I've been reading Stephen King books for a long time. Before I had my license I would beg my parents to take me to the library or the book store so I could get the latest from King, Koontz, or Clancy. Books like [b:The Dark Half|11597|The Dark Half|Stephen King|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1315768936s/11597.jpg|1316297] and [b:Selections from Skeleton Crew|666371|Selections from Skeleton Crew|Stephen King|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1374049185s/666371.jpg|652423] both terrified me and thrilled me.
Now that I'm an adult, I'm finding that King's stories have a much different impact on me. [b:Full Dark, No Stars|7912007|Full Dark, No Stars|Stephen King|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327892855s/7912007.jpg|11067830] was fantastic, but it wasn't a supernatural horror. As I was reading Doctor Sleep, I realized that it wasn't scaring me. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the book, because I did. Maybe it is a matter of maturity, or maybe I just can't believe in the fantasy, but Rose the Hat and her True Knot just didn't spook me. I'm glad I read this book, and I have to say that little Danny Torrance went through just the type of living hell you would expect after experiencing the trauma of the Overlook.
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Review: Shift Omnibus Edition
Shift Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Are all middle acts dark by their nature, or is this just a recent trend? Shift enriches the world set forth by Wool, providing a back story of how we got here and the people involved. If you've read Wool and enjoyed it you should definitely go ahead and read Shift. I'll leave the rest in the spoiler tags below.
First, let's talk about Donald. Donnie is a schmuck. When he is first introduced I sort of saw him as the underdog hero, but the more I read the more I disliked him. By the end of the story I'm wondering whether he actually wanted to have the congressional seat he was elected to, or just took it because Anna manipulated him into having it. Donnie spends the first 1/3rd of the story whining that he doesn't think he is doing the right thing, but happy to self-medicate his worries away. He spends the next 1/3rd trying to check himself out, and the final third he finally finds some motivation....to start killing people. Not a good guy!
What about Anna, though? She's a tough character for me to believe. Attractive, intelligent, powerful....and somehow also an Overly Attached Girlfriend with a fixation on Donny. We never learn whether there was an affair between Donny and Anna, only that they had a relationship prior to Donny and Helen getting together. Yet Donny behaves as if any interaction with Anna is elicit. Anna, meanwhile, continues to manipulate any and every situation to put herself next to Donny and eliminate Helen. Why, though? Is it just the challenge of being denied something she wants, or is there something about Donny to be attracted to? I couldn't see it.
I really hope we get to see more of Mission in Dust. Otherwise, that was an awful lot of pages dedicated to exhibiting a plot element.
Learning more about Solo/Jimmy and how he arrived as one of the last survivors of Silo 17 was interesting to see.
Throughout the story I've had trouble keeping mental track of the timeline. Has it been 500 years since they went into the silos, or just 100? Perhaps the author intended to create this confusion, but I'm either misreading, or there are some inconsistencies in the description of the amount of time passing.
I'm also having trouble accepting that the US government went along with the idea to nuke Atlanta. For show. Maybe we'll learn in dust that there is some reality distortion field surrounding the silos, but if that is the case it makes the story even more difficult to swallow. Wouldn't someone wander into the silo area? Is it supposed to be some BioSphere type experiment with unwary participants? The final chapters seem to hint at that when the drone encounters blue skies and green grass after passing beyond a flight threshold. On the other hand, that could have been just another visual trap like the view created for the cleaners, but why?
The silos are peopled by the folks who attended the Democratic National Convention, with one silo per delegation. Just how many people attended this convention? Enough to populate all 50 silos? How many people are in each silo? I should go back and re-read, because I think this was covered, but even with a population of a few thousand it seems unrealistic.
Are these books a political statement from Howey? I hadn't thought so when reading through Wool, but now I'm not so sure. The environment of the silos could certainly be seen as the nightmare scenario Republicans accuse Democrats of wanting. They are socialist societies with the government exercising near total control in every facet of life. Thanks Obama!
Is the outside hostile or not? When Silo 1 gasses another silo, what is that supposed to do? Solo got gassed, but he's still walking around. Is that just a pre-cursor to mark the intended victim for the nanos outside, or is there some other purpose?
I have a lot more questions than answers after reading Shift. After a short break for some other reading, I'm definitely looking forward to diving into Dust.
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Review: Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've never read a book and felt like highlighting lines or passages. That changed today.
Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely.
This, and the rest of the words from Beatty that surround it, hit me like a ton of bricks. How many times have I celebrated my own genius when I could find a clever solution to a coding problem? An elegant way to solve requirements from a customer? Yet never considered the full meaning of what I was doing? I think back on some of the projects I did after graduating college and how happy I was to be doing my job and doing it well, but never considering what it mean to be doing my job. I'm glad that I've learned to be more thoughtful since then, and here is a reminder to never become complacent.
That is just one facet, one viewpoint on this incredibly rich, yet brief portion of 451! I am in awe of Bradbury and his ability to find a collection of just a few words in a particular order that are able to convey multiple dimensions of ideas and emotions. When I flipped through the table of contents and saw that the story itself was contained in just 158 scant pages, I wondered to myself how this could be heralded as such an important work. It is! It is in no small part due to Bradbury's economy of words.
Is 451 relevant today? Very much so. In fact, it is frightening to see how much of the "family" found in 451's parlor are visible today in our daytime talk show television.
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Review: The Martian
The Martian by Andy Weir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is incredible. If you are an engineer, you will love this book. If you are fascinated by space exploration, you will love this book. If you enjoyed the movie Apollo 13, you will love this book. If you are breathing....you will probably love this book.
This is a short(ish) story describing the events of a manned mission to Mars. It isn't the first mission, nor is it planned to be the last. After a handful of days on the surface, a large storm batters the crew and they are forced to abort the mission. Unfortunately, one member of the crew is swept away and presumed dead. He wasn't.
The book isn't available from any bookseller at the moment as it is being relaunched in February of next year. You can listen to the audio book on Audible. If you don't mind reading from your PC or tablet, you can pickup the e-book at this link: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=30393.0;attach=483981
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Review: Tuck Everlasting
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I've been extremely busy, which is the only reason it took me so long to finish this book. I know it has been made into a movie, and I'm thinking this would be a rare case where filler would be needed. It was recommended reading for our oldest child, and I thought I would give it a read as well.
I enjoyed the imagery used in this story, but it isn't one that will stick with me. Whether or not everlasting life would be a blessing or a curse is a difficult and personal issue. The characters briefly express which they find it to be. Fitting for a YA story, but not enough meat for me.
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Review: The Wise Man's Fear
The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Kvothe matures quite a lot in this second book. After The Name of the Wind he is young, brash, and very talented. The events of Wise Man's Fear temper that brashness. Still, we are left with none of the larger questions answered. We know that Kvothe survives as he is narrating his own tale, but that doesn't completely eliminate the suspense as he tells it. One thing I'm glad to see from time to time throughout both of these books is for Kvothe to fail. Too often a hero is able to deftly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Kvothe is extremely talented, but he is fallible as well.
I'll be eagerly looking forward to book three to see where this story goes.
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