Further to my last post about my rekindled love for libraries, I've actually finished reading one of the books I checked out and even went ahead to check out some more.
I've been inspired a bit by the feature that's running on AVclub.com by a critic who bought a box of bargin-bin sci-fi books and is reviewing one or two a week.
While I'm not buying any books (yet) to do this on my own, I've found a lot of good stuff at the library (and had been introduced to some new authors by a very helpful clerk at Barnes & Noble the other day...)
Latest report:
Shadow of the Giant, by Orson Scott Card
I'm a big fan of his; and I've read everything he's published in Ender/Bean series of books he's done. I was in China when this book came out in 2005, and it was pretty difficult to find a copy in Hong Kong (or on the internet...and I wasn't willing to pay for Amazon shipping)
So I finally get to read it now. I burned through it, as I usually tend to do with his books.
Basically, I think that he did a pretty good job of tying all the loose ends of the series together.
And although the book is set ~100+ years in the future (?), due to the far-flung political nature of the conflict going on, he's had to adjust a bit for events that have happened in the past 7 years as he's worked on this series - the result is still pretty cohesive.
Card's personal religious and political views do seem to make an impact on the writing, and it makes for a pretty unique perspective - he never mentions the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at all in this novel, but the gentle respect for religion while still pointing at the many political realities intertwined with it are interesting.
I'm a bit sad that the series is over, but this does mean that I'm "free" to go on with some other books...
On deck:
"Overclocked" by Cory Doctorow
I really liked "Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom", I read Cory's blog, and I'm a big supporter of his anti-DRM philosophy. Overclocked is a collection of short stories by Cory. I'm on page 45 right now, in the middle of a story called "When Sysadmins ruled the earth"...it's an after the bomb type story set in the age of google. Interesting.
I've been inspired a bit by the feature that's running on AVclub.com by a critic who bought a box of bargin-bin sci-fi books and is reviewing one or two a week.
While I'm not buying any books (yet) to do this on my own, I've found a lot of good stuff at the library (and had been introduced to some new authors by a very helpful clerk at Barnes & Noble the other day...)
Latest report:
Shadow of the Giant, by Orson Scott Card
I'm a big fan of his; and I've read everything he's published in Ender/Bean series of books he's done. I was in China when this book came out in 2005, and it was pretty difficult to find a copy in Hong Kong (or on the internet...and I wasn't willing to pay for Amazon shipping)
So I finally get to read it now. I burned through it, as I usually tend to do with his books.
Basically, I think that he did a pretty good job of tying all the loose ends of the series together.
And although the book is set ~100+ years in the future (?), due to the far-flung political nature of the conflict going on, he's had to adjust a bit for events that have happened in the past 7 years as he's worked on this series - the result is still pretty cohesive.
Card's personal religious and political views do seem to make an impact on the writing, and it makes for a pretty unique perspective - he never mentions the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at all in this novel, but the gentle respect for religion while still pointing at the many political realities intertwined with it are interesting.
I'm a bit sad that the series is over, but this does mean that I'm "free" to go on with some other books...
On deck:
"Overclocked" by Cory Doctorow
I really liked "Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom", I read Cory's blog, and I'm a big supporter of his anti-DRM philosophy. Overclocked is a collection of short stories by Cory. I'm on page 45 right now, in the middle of a story called "When Sysadmins ruled the earth"...it's an after the bomb type story set in the age of google. Interesting.
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