Bookish Thoughts

After Ray Bradbury died earlier this year, there was an outpouring of tributes from a number of writers and artists. Reading all of it made me realize how much I'd missed out by not reading any of Bradbury's work over the years. Well, that isn't quite true. I read Farenheit 451 in high school, but I missed almost all of his other books. I decided it was time to fix that. I bought Something Wicked This Way Comes and was immediately met with another surprise. The receipt for the book listed recommendations for related books, among them The Halloween Tree . When I was little there was a movie called The Halloween Tree that was one of my favorites. My brother and I rented it from the video store over and over and finally just bought it. The tape was bright orange - fitting for the subject - and it was on constantly in our playroom during October. Imagine my surprise to find that Bradbury had penned one of my favorite stories (he even narrates the movie). All of t...

One of the things that's become easier for me in recent years is putting down a book before finishing it. When I was younger, I truly believed that you had to finish every book you started, that you owed it to the universe or the author or yourself or something. Occasionally I'd put a book down and simply get distracted by other things, always with the intention to return later. This happened with both Lolita and Treasure Island . Then I would feel guilty about never getting back to the book. But with the expansion of my to-read list, I've become more willing to simply put down books I don't enjoy. The easiest of all to put down was John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy . And while part of that was due to my evolving attitude, it was mostly due to my utter confusion at this book. After the movie came out last year, I started hearing good things about the book. I haven't read much in the spy genre, so I kept this book in mind as a possibl...

Alanna : The First Adventure is the first book in the Song of the Lioness quartet, written by Tamora Pierce in the 1980s. Somehow I missed these books growing up, which is a shame because I would have loved them. The first book follows ten year old Alanna, who switches places with her twin brother in order to go train as a knight (he wants to be a sorcerer, not a knight). The book follows her first three years as a page in the castle of Duke Gareth, where she makes friends, studies hard, and learns what being a knight really means. All the while she takes pains to hide her true identity, which results in some great scenes when she hits puberty. Overall the book is entertaining, if a little rushed. Children's books tend to have a shorter length requirement, especially in the days before Harry Potter , so the plot lurches forward a few times without much warning. But the characters are warm and intriguing. Overall I'm excited to see what happens in the next bo...

Discworld was actually on my radar when Going Postal came out. I hadn't started reading the series yet, but I do remember being vaguely aware that this book had been released. It may have even been what prompted me to head to the library and look for the earlier Discworld book. I ended up picking up Good Omens instead, but the thought was there. This really means that I am quickly approaching the end of the series. There are only size more books after this (until Pratchett decides to release another one, anyway). But even this late in the series, Pratchett is able to keep things fresh (in fact a lot of people enjoy his later books much more than his earlier books). Going Postal kicks off the Moist von Lipwig arc, which continues in Making Money and the rumored Raising Taxes . Moist is a conman who finally got caught. But instead of killing him, Ventinari decides to put him in charge of Ankh-Morpork's failing post office. It doesn't take Moist long to re...

As you can see by the time between my two posts about Ready Player One , I had a hard time putting this book down. The plot was incredibly exciting, full of twists and turns. But my initial complaint about the clunky exposition still stands. Cline occasionally has trouble with the "show don't tell" axiom of writing. But when he starts showing the story gets really good. I think the book this one reminded me of the most is The Hunger Games . Great plot, exciting action, fully realized apocalyptic future, hard to put down. But when you step away from it you start to notice some pacing issues. Having read this book, I'm a little surprised it's not being marketed as YA. But maybe it's just that the target audience (people who have some familiarity with the 1980s) is in their 20s and 30s. I really did enjoy this book. I think it will be really interesting to see how it ages, whether someone younger than me could appreciate it as much as I did. I...

If you look back over my blog, you'll notice that in late June and early July I read 12 books. This is a lot, even by my standards (and even considering that half of them were graphic novels). But within the first few pages of Frank Herbert's Dune , I knew I wanted to take my time with this book. It was clear that this book was dense and I'd need to slow down to really understand what was going on. This was driven home by the fact that I needed to reread the first 30 pages a few times before I felt like I had a good grasp of the characters and which ones were important. I'm really glad I took my time with this book. It was excellent, and I enjoyed spreading the experience of reading it out over several weeks. I'm not sure I'll read any of the sequels, but I do expect to come back to this one again. I loved that each conversation included the thoughts of the various participants. It painted a complete picture of who knew what and what they plann...

I first discovered Jenny Lawson when Neil Gaiman linked to a blog entry of hers detailing their meeting at W00tstock. You can go read it here , but the takeaway message is that after asking Gaiman whether unicorns or zombies would win in the battle for world domination, she proceeded to explain why he was completely wrong. I started clicking through her blog which never failed to make me laugh. Jenny is insane, and she has debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. Somehow she manages to find the humor in all of this and pass along her intense joy in life. I'd definitely recommend checking out her blog. Just click through to a few random posts. But make sure you look up the James Garfield Christmas Miracle , which still brings tears to my eyes. Not in a laugh so hard I'm crying way, but in a my faith is restored in humanity way. The book is a lot like her blog. It's somewhat more structured, since she actually had an editor for it, but the style and content are ver...