Bookish Thoughts

Terry Pratchett's 26th Discworld novel, Thief of Time , has almost the same plot as one of my favorite episodes of Angel. Sort of. It's the end of the world (this happens almost as much on the Discworld as it does in the Buffyverse). This time, it happens to be caused by a clock that freezes time. So once it starts to tick, it never will again, and neither will any other clock. Everyone will be be stuck in a single moment that lasts forever. The details are different, but the stories are similar enough that I went to look up which one came out first. It turns out both were released in 2001, so this is a bit like Leibniz and Newton coming up with calculus at the same time. Okay, maybe this plot isn't quite as genius as calculus. But it's certainly enjoyable. Time paradoxes and apocalypses are always fun. This is definitely one of my favorite Discworld novels so far. Of course, the Death books tend to be among my favorite so there's no real surprise...

In the climax of Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass , the final book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, two twelve year olds save the world by having sex and declaring their undying love for each other. This is something that I do not like. I find it weird and uncomfortable and it keeps me from re-reading this book. I probably would have continued to ignore it, if not for the Mark Reads project, though it is nice to reaffirm my own view of this book. It's a shame, because there's a lot about The Amber Spyglass that I really like.Dr. Mary Malone is a great character. The mulefa and their world are endlessly fascinating. I love all the thought and detail that goes into this completely alternate evolutionary chain. Lyra and Will's journey through the underworld is great and manages to bring some Greek mythology into play with all the Christian mythology that dominates the trilogy. Unfortunately, as interesting as the bulk of the book is, the ending is e...

Who doesn't love The Phantom Tollbooth ? People who've never read it, that's who. The plot is fairly simple. Milo is a chronically bored young boy who can't find anything worth being interested in the world around him. One day, a mysterious tollbooth arrives in his room. With nothing better to do, he constructs it and drives through. He quickly finds himself beyond expectations, journeying through Dictionopolis (where he learns the importance of words) and Digitopolis (where he learns about numbers). He also makes stops in the Valley of Sound and the Forest of Sight. Eventually he and his newfound friends, Tock the Watchdog and the Humbug, brave the Mountains of Ignorance to rescue the Princesses Rhyme and Reason and restore peace to the realm. I first read this book for school in the sixth grade for a school assignment. It's one of those books where the little details just sort of stick with you. Like the dodecahedron, or the Giant/Dwarf/Fat Man/Th...

I've slowed down a lot in my read of these books. I think that by reading slower I'm missing less. I have time to stop and think about plot developments, theorize about what might happen, and make all the connections that I missed in the first book. I'm enjoying my slower pace. Of course it also means that by the time I finish one of these books I forget what happened at the beginning. The stories start to bleed together. So here's a list of the things I wanted to talk about from this book. Though I probably missed several. Sansa's Wedding Who'd have known that Sansa's wedding to Tyrion would end up being one of the happier ones in the book? It took me completely by surprise. Still, I think that if they'd communicated just a bit better, they really could have been happy together. Or happier than they were anyway. They had more in common than Sansa ever realized. I definitely get where she's coming from - a thirteen year old girl mar...

In preparation for my vacation in the Adirondacks, Boyfriend had me read Isaac Asimov's (abridged) autobiography, It's Been a Good Life . Apparently the owner of the house we stayed at actually knew Asimov, though I didn't end up getting a chance to talk with him about how awesome that must have been. So I read this book, which was edited down by Asimov's second wife, Janet Jeppson. Boyfriend had told me that it was a bit like Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman , but with less science. And I did find that to be the case. It was a bunch of vignette's placed in loosely chronological order. Asimov discusses his atheism and humanism, which are points of view I agree with. He talks about how much he writes, which just blew me away. There's a line towards the end where says, "In those six years [since his heart attack], I had published about ninety books." The man wrote constantly, and he wrote everything. Wikipedia  mentions that his work ...

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret Terry Pratchett writes excellent vacation books. The Discworld novels are fun, funny, and light. They're quick and easy to read, but don't require too much thought. And, since Pratchett puts breaks in the text every few pages instead of dividing the stories into chapters, they're easy to consume in any size chunk you want. So whether I have an hour to hang out on the hammock, or five minutes while we're waiting for everyone to gather in the kitchen, I can dive right into a Discworld novel and not worry too much about getting interrupted in the middle of the action. The Truth  deals with the invention of the newspaper in Ankh-Morpork. William De Worde has been sending out a weekly, handwritten newsletter to a few nobles around the city who are willing to pay $5 an issue to keep up to date on the goings on of Ankh-Morpork. But when the dwarfs invent a printing press, William quickly finds out that he can print his newsletter ...

Comic book super heroes are everywhere. I never read comic books growing up, but I definitely knew who Batman and Superman were. I knew the origin stories, the costumes, the main villains. And I learned most of it by osmosis. There was always some sort of Batman cartoon on TV, along with those wonderfully cheesy movies from the 90s. And I loved Smallville in high school, though I didn't make it through all ten seasons. The heroes were larger than life. The details ultimately didn't matter that much. All that really mattered was that Bruce Wayne dressed up as a bat with high tech gadgets and saved Gotham City from the likes of The Riddler and Two-Face. Or Clark Kent took off his glasses and put his underwear on the outside and saved Metropolis from Lex Luthor while seducing Lois Lane. Or Peter Parker got bit by a radioactive spider and, um, liked redheads? I know less about Spiderman. Of the classic superheroes, Batman is my favorite. It may be because I was exp...