Bookish Thoughts

Another Discworld novel! This one followed Captain Sam Vimes and The City Watch on a diplomatic mission to Uberwald where the werewolves are attempting to start a war among the dwarves. They steal the ceremonial throne just before the coronation of the new king with plans to hold it hostage unless the dwarves agree to elect a  different king, one who would deny dwarfdom to the more liberal dwarves with modern thoughts about gender and such. This was a fun detective novel with lots of twists and turns. I figured out the mystery fairly quickly, but it was still lots of fun to read. I've noticed this more and more with Terry Pratchett.  If I'm familiar with the source material (vampires, rock music, or fairy tales), then I catch on to a lot of the early clues and figure out the endgame pretty close to the beginning of the book. If I'm less familiar, then I miss the jokes and clues and the resolution of the novel comes as more of a surprise. But I like the ones ...

I first learned of John Green when I came across this quote "...because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. We don't have to be like, 'Oh yeah that purse is okay' or like, 'Yeah, I like that band's early stuff.' Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can't-control-yourself-love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they are saying is, 'You like stuff', which is just not a good insult at all, like 'You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness'." There's also this one: Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' How fantastically true are these quotes? (an...

I started reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman toward the end of high school and built up my collection over the first few years of college.  But it took me a bit longer to get around to the spin-offs.  With Death: The Time of Your Life , I finally managed to finish this collection.  There's a nice sense of completion that comes with that. This graphic novel picks up with Foxglove and Hazel, who were first introduced in A Game of You .  They lived upstairs from Barbie, the central character in that arc. Though Foxglove previously appeared off-page in the first arc, Preludes and Nocturnes , when her ex-girlfriend calls her in an attempt to get back together. In A Game of You , Hazel discovers she is pregnant, which she's a bit amazed by.  Yes, she had sex with a man, but she was told that if you do it standing up, you can't get pregnant.  Hazel's not the brightest person. Foxglove agrees to stay with her and try to work things out, though. Death: The...

Children of God  is the sequel to Mary Doria Russell's debut novel, The Sparrow .  In The Sparrow  mankind discovered intelligent life on Rakhat, a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, and launched a mission to go and study the life there. Children of God  deals with the aftermath of that mission, which sparked a revolution on Rakhat. There are two sentient species living on Rakhat, one carnivorous (the Jana'ata) and one herbivorous (the Runa). The Jana'ata used the Runa for everything, from labor to food.  They controlled when they could breed and who they could breed with.  They also monitored they're own population quite closely, at roughly 4% of the Runa population. Of course, when the humans learned about these strict breeding policies, they were appalled.  And they incited the Runa to revolution. Children of God  follows the aftermath of this.  How the revolution plays out and what it's consequences are. Parallel to th...

I love Good Omens , which was written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman early in both of their careers.  It's my favorite book.  I discovered Good Omens in college, and I've read it at least once a year since then.  Every now and then I just get in the mood to go revisit Crowley, Aziraphale, Anathema Device, Newton Pulsifer, Adam, and all the rest.  This book remains entertaining and laugh out loud funny no matter how many times I read it. This post is more of a love letter/recap than a review and will contain intense spoilers.  What follows is everything I love most about this book.. Good Omens begins nearly at the beginning of everything: It was a nice day. All the days had been nice.  There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. So, that's pretty close to the beginning.  It actually starts as Adam and a newly pregnant Eve are looking for shelter having just been kicked out of the Gard...

The Sparrow  is about humanity's first encounter with extraterrestrial life. The Sparrow  is about the meeting, blending, and clashing of two cultures. The Sparrow  is about the frontier spirit that pushes us to always explore. The Sparrow  is about a group of people coming together to form a family. The Sparrow  is about one man's struggle to find God, and his despair at what he finds. The Sparrow  is about tragedies that result from miscommunication. The Sparrow  is about sacrifice and love. The Sparrow  is a rich, important book, and you should read it. In the year 2019, humanity discovers intelligent life on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. While the UN is arguing over whether it's worth sending people to a planet over 4 lightyears away, the Vatican quickly and privately pulls it's own mission together.  And so four Jesuit priests, a physician, an engineer, an astronomer, and a computer scientist embark on an a...

Yesterday morning twitter informed me that it was Free Comic Book day.  I immediately followed the link to find a participating comic book store nearby and went off to collect my free comic book.  Well, I didn't end up getting a free comic book; most of the selection was aimed at kids.  But I did get my hands on Frank Miller's Batman: Year One  and I rounded out my Sandman  collection with Death: The High Cost of Living . Batman: Year One  was published in 1986 as part of DC's effort to reimagine some of its superheros and introduce them to a new generation.  I don't think this book does much to alter Batman's origin story, but it adds some detail. Honestly, it's interesting to start thinking about the major superheroes.  They're all familiar, but the details of the stories differ over the years.  Bruce Wayne became Batman in 1939, in 1986, and in 2005.  I'm sure there were variations on his origin story told multiple...

How do I even being to review The Book Thief ?  I've been reading it at a pace of about two chapters a day with the Mark Reads project.  Mark Oshiro, who runs the blog, reads and reviews books a chapter at a time.  The Book Thief has incredibly short chapters, hence the accelerated reading speed.  He's already read the entire Twilight saga, the Harry Potter series, The Hunger Game s trilogy, and is now finishing up The Book Thief .  Next he starts on His Dark Materials , followed by The Lord of the Rings .  He's also working his way through Infinite Jest , which I gave up on pretty quickly, but may eventually revisit.  Reading these books along with him is a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it. He also runs a sibling site called Mark Watches , in which he does the same thing with episodes of television shows.  Past projects include Firefly and Doctor Who , the current project is Avatar: The Last Airbender , and the announced future projec...