Bookish Thoughts

A Wizard of Earthsea is the first of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books. It's also the first YA book she ever wrote, according to a note at the end of the book, which may explain some of the issues I had with the pacing of the story. The book follows Ged, a boy who is born with a talent for magic. Over the course of the story he begins to study magic, heads off to a university for sorcerers, graduates, and faces some initial challenges. I think the rest of the series follows the remainder of his life, but the first book is really about him growing up. While the plot is a bit cliched at this point, I imagine it was fairly fresh when LeGuin wrote it back in the 60s. And I really enjoyed the world building. A country made of hundreds of islands isn't something I'm used to, and it was neat that sailing played such a large part in the story. Although there were parts when the sailing went on so long that I felt like I was playing Windwaker. I also really lik...

Deadline , the second book in Mira Grant's  Newsflesh  trilogy and sequel to  Feed , was a really difficult book to get through. I actually walked away from it for a couple of weeks because I had so many issues with the main character. But the plot eventually pulled me back and I actually read the last half of the book pretty quickly (and only partly because I have so much time on my hands right now). Shaun takes over the narration of this book after his sister dies at the end of  Feed . While I liked him fine in the first book, being inside his head destroyed most of my goodwill. It's quickly revealed that George's death has driven Shaun insane. He has vivid hallucinations that she's talking to him and he has violent tendencies, striking out at his employees and friends seemingly at random. I don't think these traits would bother me so much except that Shaun recognizes them both as negative things that are driving away his friends and proceeds to do absolutely ...

Lauren Redniss'  Radioactive  is a light biography of Marie Curie, focusing on her love life and scientific discoveries. When I say light, I mean that this book took me about three hours to read, total. It's more of a display book than anything else, with really cool art and nearly self-contained stories on each page. You could easily flip open to any page in this book and start reading without missing too much. Here are a few examples of pages from the book, which are really cool to look at: The science isn't very detailed. The author chooses to give a very basic overview of the concepts of radioactivity, nuclear fission, and half-lives. But that didn't really bother me, in part because I just liked looking at the art and in part because I already have a decent understanding of most of the science. Redniss intersperses the story of Marie Curie with a history of her work through science. She touches on some of the "miracle-cure" radium-based pr...

I remember Max Brooks' World War Z  being immensely popular at one point in college. Since one of the big battles in the book takes place at the college I went to (or rather, the college across the street), I just chalked it up to that. And since I wasn't much interested in zombies at that point in my life, I made no real effort to read the book myself. But then my book club chose it for the month of January, so I gave it a try. World War Z  isn't at all what I was expecting. The scope is massive, actually covering the entire world. There's a section devoted to the front in the United States, but there's also sections about how the plague started in China and the civil war it sparked there, Russia's attempts to maintain control of the military, Israel's decision to lock their borders, a nuclear war between Iran and Pakistan, the emergence of Cuba as a new economic superpower, the complete disappearance of North Korea, and the evacuation of Ja...

Lev Grossman's The Magicians is an interesting book. It's definitely good, and it explores some themes that I enjoyed. But I'm honestly not sure whether I liked it or not. I don't think I'll be able to fully form an opinion until after I've read the sequel. Like The Name of the Wind , The Magicians has been described to me as "Harry Potter for adults" and, as with Rothfuss' book, I have to disagree about that label being applied to this book. While it does feature a bunch of kids at a magical school The Magicians  is far from the happy, escapist fantasy that I think of when I think of Harry Potter . In fact, the book mostly serves as a subversion of that entire genre. The characters of The Magicians  are miserable over-achievers. They all ended up at Brakebills college for magicians because they were the top of the class at their very elite high schools. They're all also deeply unhappy; most of them have parents who range from di...

This was my second time through Marion Zimmer Bradley's epic retelling of the King Arthur legend. The first time was over a decade ago, when I was still in high school. I remember really liking the book and wanting to read it again. I also remember punching it at one point because of something Gwenhwyfer did. But mostly I remember a fun fantasy that was a cool twist on the Arthurian legends; the tale is told entirely through the point of view of the female characters. What I manage to forget, somehow, every single time I come back to King Arthur, is that this tale is a tragedy. I think this may be because I usually only listen to the first half of the Camelot soundtrack. The story is the Golden Age of Camelot and all the great, chivalrous deeds that the Knights of the Round Table perform. But it's ultimately about the destruction of that Golden Age. Arthur's rule was too good to last. People are not fundamentally good and desires and loyalties twist into si...

Lioness Rampant , the fourth book in Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet is by far the best. It has a coherent plot that ties all of the chapters together. It ties up all the loose ends that have been left hanging in the rest of the series. It highlight's Alanna's growth and gives everyone a happy ending. It's actually impressive how much Pierce improved over the course of this series. I think part of that is that she was given more room to develop her characters and plots. The fourth book is nearly twice as long as the first one. It also helps that the main character has grown up a lot since the first book. The final book completes Alanna's journey to adulthood, which follows the classic hero's journey beat for beat. But Pierce manages to keep it fresh and interesting. I'm definitely keeping this series around for my hypothetical future daughter (who already has an entire shelf on my bookcase). I'll probably get around to the r...