Bookish Thoughts

I hadn't known that the main character in Carl Sagan's Contact  was based on a real person until my mother-in-law gave me this book for my birthday. It's a biography of Dr. Jill Tater, inspiration for Ellie Arroway, who as devoted almost her entire life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. As such, it's also a history of that field of study. The subject matter is interesting, especially when it comes to the financial struggles, under-the-table deals and slapped together technology that are more apparent in SETI than any other field of science. And Dr. Tarter is certainly an interesting woman. But I had a hard time with this book. Mostly because I still can't figure out how the author meant to organize it. There was probably a method to her madness, but I found the book jumped around too much for me to really follow the thread of Dr. Tarter's life. Her second husband is mentioned two chapters before her divorce, in a way that makes it seem like her ...

This is not a book I'd typically pick up. Having picked it up, it's not the sort of book I'd typically stick with to the end. But a coworker wrote it. She gifted it to me after I read All the Light We Cannot See  and The Book Thief  in quick succession because she assumed I was interested in WWII literature. And it's not that I'm not, but there's only so much you can read about any one topic and about WWII in particular. So going in to this, I was not particularly excited to be reading about a German soldier and his time in an American POW camp. The thing is, the story ended up being pretty interesting. There was a grace and elegance to it that was fighting to get out. But it was fighting hard through rough and stilted language. As a rough draft, it's pretty good. As a published novel, well, this is the problem with self-publishing. The book is in desperate need of an editor. The problem is two-fold. English is not the author's native language. There...

I first read this book in elementary school, when I was nine or ten years old. It's always stuck with me. At the time it was very different from anything else I'd read. It's set in Zimbabwe, 200 years in the future, and the author does an excellent job of combining traditional cultural and language elements with sci-fi ideas. Most notably is the mile-high building which sways in the wind, an image that has stuck with me to this day. Revisiting this book, I'm impressed with my younger self for reading it. I've always been called a precocious reader, seeking out things for older audiences. But this is marketed as a children's book and it's longer and more intricate than some teen stuff I've read in the last few years. The book follows three children, pampered and privileged but also sheltered and naive. Their father is a famous general, responsible for breaking up most of the gangs in his city. Having seen that violence up close for most of his life, h...

This is only the second of Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad  series that I've read, but I really like it for the way it deviates from some classic detective series. By keeping the setting the same but jumping to a new detective in each novel, French is able to write psychological thrillers that don't come across as cheap. Each case is deeply personal to the detective working it, managing to unleash all manner of ghosts and questionable behaviors. They're once-in-a-lifetime cases, and the affect the detectives in different ways. They're also incredibly disturbing, in a way that sneaks up on you and leaves you wanting more. This particular book (the third in the series, and the other thing I like about this series is that you can read it in any order, which makes it a lot easier given my tendency to shop used book sales) focuses on Detective Francis Mackey and the girl who got away. The girl who was, in fact, murdered some twenty years previously. It takes a lot fo...

A little more than halfway through the Discworld  series, the Industrial Revolution is starting to take off. The Truth  introduces the movable type printing press, leading immediately to the invention of the newspaper (and, naturally, tabloids). It's fun to return to this novel in particular because it introduces a bunch of characters who continue to inhabit the background for the rest of the series. Reporters William and Sacharissa and their photographer, a vampire named Otto, will keep popping up any time there's something interesting going on. But this is where they first get the bug for chasing and reporting the news. The mystery at the heart of this story is actually the least interesting thing about it to me. Someone is trying to frame Lord Vetinari for murder in an attempt to replace him with a new patrician of their choosing. This is a well Pratchett returns to time and time again. But Vetinari is smarter, more resilient, and, strangely enough, more beloved than tha...

Well I'm officially in love with Isabel Allende. She writes beautiful, lyrical, romantic historic fiction with incredibly real characters. It brings the history alive, and her tendency to branch out and explore the lives of secondary characters allows for a lot of sympathy as well as multiple reactions to the events she writes about. Island Beneath the Sea follows Zarité (aka Tété), a woman born into slavery on Saint-Domngue. She lives through the Haitian Revolution before moving with her master to New Orleans, where she eventually achieves freedom for herself and her children. Tété is a wonderful character, strong and fierce and intelligent. She makes incredible sacrifices for the sake of her children, doing everything in her power to keep her family together. Her resilience is astounding, as is the naivete of her master, who is sure that the two of them have a bond that goes deeper than owner and property (mostly because he's the owner and has the luxury of delusion). ...

The Churn  is another novella in the expanse, released between novels to fill in backstory and make the universe a little richer. This one in particular is an origin story of sorts for Amos Burton, possibly the most enigmatic character in the series. Amos' background has only been hinted at, and I believe there's more of it in the TV show than the books. Or rather, the TV show is pulling from all of the books to make a more fleshed-out character, and that results in the audience gaining a bit more information through osmosis. That said, this story also glosses over the things I learned from the show. Amos' early childhood (son of a prostitute, used as a prostitute from a young age) is only hinted at. He has a highly questionable sexual relationship with an older woman that is by no means consensual, mostly due to Amos' youth and the momentum of that relationship. He's been so abused that it never even occurs to him to say no. But this story is about how he get...