Books you've read in 2008 - Page 4

Re: Books you've read in 2008

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles

Blackwater

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Slowly making a dent into Anna Karenina. War and Peace is only second to LOTR as my favorite novel. It's good to be back in that universe. I hope this one lives up to W&P even a little bit. Tolstoi rulzzzz.

--
H

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Since last update:
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. Despite an ending that cut out just when things were getting really good, I grew to adore this book. The world Chabon has created felt incredibly authentic, so much so that I took certain Yiddish nicknames invented by the author for granted as dug up historical slang. Meyer Landsman is one of the most original detective protagonists I have ever read. Unlike detectives like Holmes and Poirot that do it for the glory and the ego boost, Landsman does it because he has to. He's too good to look away, and can't stand by when he catches a whiff of something off. The story of the homicide victim — or rather the legendary legacy of the homicide victim — was beautifully rendered. By the end of the book, I felt the loss of the man as keenly as the mourners gathered in the rain for his funeral. A great supporting cast of characters helped seal the deal. I wish the book was another 100 pages or so to really delve into the cosequences of the conspiracy, but I enjoyed what was there very much..

Star Wars - Coruscant Nights I: Jedi Twilight by Michael Reaves. This isn't anywhere near the best written Star Wars book I've come across, but it was a fun jaunt and it was highly anticipated on my end for one reason: it's the first series to be set between Episode III and the original Star Wars movie. Given the series name, all the books will apparently take place on Coruscant, which feels kind of limiting. On the other hand, it is a really interesting place in a Blade Runner kind of a way, and the cast of characters — mostly Reaves's own creations from other efforts in the universe — is engaging enough to peg a plot onto. And as far as villains go, you can't beat having Darth Vader breathing down your heroes' necks. Not the epic dark fantasy I was hoping for as a follow up to Episode III — certainly not a direct continuation of the story on the level of James Luceno's Dark Lord — but an interesting enough story to keep me coming back for future installments.

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Then you'll be interested to know that Ron Howard has acquired the rights to the books and that J. Michael Straczynski (who has made no secret of the fact that his TV series Babylon 5 was influenced by the Lensman tales) is writing the screenplay. I think they're shooting for a 2010 release.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Books you've read in 2008

That sounds like a good match of talent and material. I'm not a huge Ron Howard fan but he's at least reliably competent, and I'm aware of Straczynski's love of Smith's books (I've seen him mention them in the same breath as Dune and Lord of the Rings), so I don't think he'll try to get too uppity about "fixing" them while scripting. Hopefully the film actually happens (they've got at least six books to do, so there's big franchise potential) because if done right a lot of filmgoers will get their brains melted

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Not to stray too far from the topic of books, but I should mention that Howard has acquired the rights for Imagine Entertainment - the production company he runs with Brian Grazer. That doesn't necessarily mean that he's going to direct it personally. (His first project from a JMS script, Changeling, ended up being directed by Clint Eastwood because Howard had too many directing commitments and he decided he didn't want to hold the film until he was free.) Generally speaking I think Howard picks good material and has a solid understanding of story. (Apollo 13 is one of my favorite films, I've lost track of how many times I've seen it.)

Regards,

Joe

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Ratings 0-4 stars, most recent first:

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin: 1/2
A biography of Mortenson's heroic efforts to build schools in the poorest areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. At times he seems to cross the fine line between altruism and madness.


Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America's Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang by William Queen:

The Shack by William P. Young: Zero Stars

No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy:

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams:

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini: +

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer: 1/2

The Pesthouse by Jim Crace:

Jon

Re: Books you've read in 2008

I work at a middle school in deep south Texas, Darren Shan is popular at the moment. So far this school year, I have read all 12 of his Cirque De Freak books. This next school year, I am going to read his DEMONATA series. By-the-way, I loved the CIRQUE DE FREAK books.....There is a CDF movie coming in early 2009....But I hear that it is a very,very loose adaptation of the first 3 books.....BUMMER

Laters,
Ruben

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Ringo Starr, Postcards From The Boys.

Re: Books you've read in 2008

I finished the rest of The Black Company series by Glen Cook, consisting of Shadow Games, Dreams of Steel, The Silver Spike, Bleak Seasons, She is the Darkness, Water Sleeps, and Soldiers Live.

Great great series, I can't say enough about The Black Company books. The ending to Soldiers Live is perfect.



I also finished Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson. Book 1 & 2 were really good, book 3 was long winded and overall pretty poor, and book 4 was excellent. It was probably the weakest overall book in the series because of such a weak and repetitive book 3. At 923 pages long, it could have been chopped down to a great 600-700 pages by removing a lot of the internal philosophical discussions of each character.

I got the book from the Book Depository in the UK, they offer free shipping to the U.S. The prices are way better than amazon.co.uk when you include shipping charges. They don't do pre-orders so the discounted price is only shown after they get the books. This is the third book I have ordered from them and delivery is pretty fast at around 1 week from ordering.

The Book Depository - Homepage - Cheap books with free delivery worldwide "all books for all people"

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Since last update:
The City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau. I fear I'm finally past the age where I can get the maximum level of enjoyment from children's books. Here is a carefully crafted tale in a unique world (though, if you've ever gotten into the Myst series, it's not that unique) with enjoyable enough leads and and intriguing mystery. Yet I was still several steps ahead of the whole way through. And both the protagonists were a little too broadly drawn for my tastes, though the way Lina's story is told hints at far greater complexities within her background than are explicitly detailed. I certainly would have crumbled after enduring the personal tragedies that she has. It's a nice piece of science fiction, and a fun yarn to blow an evening on. But I would have loved it when I was in middle school.

The Prophet of Yonwood by Jeanne Duprau. What a strange book for a perfectly strange time in my life. A To Kill A Mocking Bird-esque yarn set at the brink of some future oblivion in a rural North Carolina town, covers coming-of-age subject matter familiar from so much young adult fiction. If the world these young protagonists occupy is scarier and more menacing than similar stories from decades past, it's only because the current young adult reader occupies a scarier and more menacing world than decades past. The racial overtones of ...Mockingbird have been replaced here, half a century hence, with religious fundamentalism. The macro-level fundamentalism of the titular town is contrasted with the United States's imminent war with "godless" enemies. It never quite comes together, feeling blander and less acutely defined than better stories of the same ilk. But the protagonist's personal journey is never-the-less engaging, and I enjoyed the way that Yonwood felt like a step out from the rest of the world; through TVs and cellphones the news of the real world intrudes, but never quite penetrates. Life for protagonists Nickie and Grover decades from now is on its basic level the same as it was for Scout, Jem and Dill decades ago. After two novels from DuPrau, I can safely say that she misses the top tier of children's writers. But she's eked out an interesting niche for herself, approaching science fiction from a sideways glance, that I will gladly continue to follow.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. In one of Madeleine L'Engle's later, lesser novels for young adults I found one of my favorite quotes: "Life at best is a precarious business, and we aren't told that difficult or painful things won't happen, just that it matters." This same world view permeates this mid-twentieth-century Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for women, a novel filled with so many detestible modern literary trappings and yet redeemed by a living, beating heart. Not a single prominent character in this story has an easy go of things, not even the villains. The kindest, most loving characters don't say the nice or comforting thing, they say the honest thing and stick around for the fall out. Lily Owens has no easy answers or helpful revelations waiting to ease her mind. Even religion -- and this is a very religious story -- is considered a metaphorical force; God is not some etherial being to take solace in, but the divine strength within each and every one of us, if we can manage to find it. Spending these last few evenings with the Boatwright sisters proved to be a warm and hospitable respite, especially for a book driven by pain and suffering.

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Past month was John Saul:

Suffer the Children
Punish the Childrn
Cry for the Strangers
Comes the Blind Fury
Whent the Wind Blows
The God Project
Nathaniel
Brainchild
Hellfire (just finished last night)
The Unwanted
The Unloved
Creature
Second Child
Shadows
The Homing
The Right Hand of Evil
Manhatten Hunt Club
Perfect Nightmare

Basically, I cleaned out a second hand book store for every title I could find. There's still another 7 or so book of his for me to find and read. Not as good as a writer as Stephen King (IMO), but good reading nonetheless. Very simmilar plot devices are noticed when you read his books back to back, especially his earlier works. His later works are not so much supernatural, but still really "neat". Manhatten Hunt Club was pretty interesting, but a distant relative to his first works, like Suffer the Children.

I'm probably off reading for a while now, a bit compulisive once I start.

FWIW, I didn't care much for LOTR. I'll need to re-read it later this year and see if I get more out of it. I'm sure I will.

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Funny you should mention that: seeing the trailer for "Ember" got me back on the series, so I plowed through "Sparks" and the newest book, which I bought a month or so ago:

Since last update:
Star Wars - Coruscant Nights I: Jedi Twilight by Michael Reaves. This book was more difficult to slog through than any in recent memory. It wasn't just lazily written, it was boring. The first Coruscant Nights book made an enticing go of peeling back the layers of the seedy planetary underworld. By contrast, this book felt like a relatively uneventful episode of "Law & Order," circling among a very limited number of settings trying to solve a murder mystery I didn't much care about. A hundred pages went by before the time the main story started, and it never really went anywhere. On the periphery, The first inklings of the Rebel Alliance are left on the periphery so that the book can focus on the death of a sculptor? And our protagonists, who were at least a little interesting in the last book, already resolved their inner conflicts in said last book. Stable and confident individuals aren't too much fun to read about, especially when contrived romance is the only thing that's left to drive things forward. I'm still planning on finishing out this pulp trilogy, but so far consider me disappointed.

The People of the Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau. The second book in the series, but the third one I've read. I find that the books fit a late night niche, when everyone else has gone to bed and I'm still up — enjoying the peace and solitude. DuPrau's angle here is less original than the original and its sequel, a Mad Max-esque scenario where the human race's close brush with Armageddon has compelled the survivors to follow their best instincts instead of their worst. Midway through a dispiriting journey, a supporting character expresses what I take to be DuPrau's message at the heart of this Ember saga: "People didn't make life, so they can't destroy it. Even if we were to wipe out every bit of life in the world, we can't touch the place life comes from. Whatever made the plants and animals and people spring up in the first place will always be there, and life will spring up again." Her future is a dystopia, yet it moves forward from the logical premise that whatever facet of human nature drove people towards brotherhood and civilization in the first place would naturally drive people towards brotherhood and civilization again. Under that principle, The People of the Sparks could be Cormac McCarthy's The Road several centuries later; that the one optimistic spark at the end of his bleak and forbidding tale could have since ignited into a bright flame of civilization.

The Diamond of Darkhold by Jeanne DuPrau. The final Book of Ember brings all the disparate pieces from the previous three books and weaves them into a powerful, cohesive whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Rolling right from my recently purchased paperback reprint of The People of Sparks into the first edition hardcover of this one that I'd bought off the New Releases shelf at Borders a month or so back gave witness to just how consistent DuPrau's literary voice has become: Despite four years (and one prequel) separating Sparks and Darkhold, the transition was as seamless as turning the page to a new chapter. And as I neared the conclusion, I was struck by just how invested in this series I had become. Having finished the series, I can now concretely say that my earliest two reviews didn't give DuPrau enough credit: over the course of these four stories, her imagined universe and story emerge as a complete thing, meticulously plotted: an attempt to present us with an origin story for human civilization in a post-historical era. Seeing the way Sparks and Ember intersect and, ultimately, fit into a larger world ran true in a way I wouldn't have expected. If I've found any given entry to be pedestrian, it's because I mistook humility for lack of ambition. Here, Doon's earliest ambition is fulfilled as he and Lina take their places in history.

(P.S. Dave, I also like Dan Brown's books. He writes the type of literary cotton candy that his own dreadful writing can't entirely get in the way of.)

Re: Books you've read in 2008

I'm an insomniac, and reading is one of the few things that calms me down enough to get to bed at a decent hour. Particularly now that the cold weather is setting in again, curling up under the comforter with a book is one of my favorite parts of the day. The quality varies enormously, with the more recent stuff I've read on the lower end of the spectrum. Probably my favorite Star Wars author (though he takes himself too seriously) is Matthew Stover. That being said, all but the worst of them are real page turners. Definitely a plunge into nerd-dom, though. The religious stuff doesn't bother me. But I resent the way Brown acts like he's filling me in on a secret with very well-worn cultural or historical facts. With every book, I'm stunned that his amateurish, cliched writing has made it through the editing process intact. But yes, he is a gripping storyteller with an excellent sense of pacing. When I need a beach book, he fills the bill nicely.

I've been plodding through "Dreams from my Father" for months now, and I'd really like to finish it before November 4th. The first third of the book moved quickly, but I've gotten bogged down in the Chicago section and keep switching to other things.

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Well, I finally finished another book. I've been reading several, but I just kind of stalled with all that I have competing for my time. Good thing there was a new Michael Connelly to jump start my reading. I found The Brass Verdict to be an enjoyable read. It may not be his best work, but it is still better than a lot of crap out there.

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Just finished Ender In Exile, a book set in between Ender's Game's final chapters.

It's.. interesting. To be honest, Orson Scott Card is a great writer, but his newer books sometimes wade into a very formula kind of format. Which isn't bad. The book itself has some really great moments, good visuals. But it doesn't really open up any new territory. But if you're a fan of the series, it's a bit like chicken soup - it's still good every time, even though you've had it before.

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Since last update:
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama. I finally pulled this book off the history shelves of the local Borders a few months back, when Hillary Clinton was still contesting the Democratic nomination — but the writing was on the wall. The circumstances of its writing fascinated me: a memoir of a potential president before his voice was corrupted by political ambition. And as a black voice, Obama seemed to offer a continuation of my education in black America, charted by Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, Malcolm X (via Alex Haley) and Margaret Walker, among others. For better or for worse, Obama presents his life story through an intellectual, not emotional, lens. The book is divided into three sections, each focusing on both a period in his life and an aspect of his heritage. The first, "Origins," covers the period of his life from birth to shortly after graduating college. Much of this section is spent reflecting on his white mother's side of the family and growing up under the care of her and his grandparents, from Hawaii to Indonesia and back again. I breezed through this section quickly; it was written with a directness and immediacy that appealed to me. But I got bogged down for months in the second, "Chicago," which chronicles his community organizing efforts on the South Side of Chicago. This section is bleak and overly political in its own way. Worse, in Chicago Obama sees himself as a shaper of the community, not a member. This shifts the writing to a descriptive, observational style in which he largely removes himself his own narrative. It is during this period in his life that he seems to strive the most to be an African American, and yet he continually keeps himself at an arm's length from the people around him. This observational voice continues into the third section, "Kenya", but the nature of being surrounded by family — even if all but a couple are complete strangers to him — unavoidably weaves his personal feelings more directly back into the proceedings. I breezed through this last section over two nights.to finish the book before November 4th, while the idea of an Obama presidency was still a hope to crushed or vindicated. My search for a candid, accessible Barack Obama was largely frustrated by an author that was a little too reserved and careful. Considering that he did win, however, I'm glad to have gotten this perspective.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi. The kind of literary introduction that convinces a reader he's found the next Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov or Robert A. Heinlein. Scalzi does an incredible job crafting a vision of humanity that rings remarkably true, set amongst a nightmarish galaxy that is as truly bizarre and alien as the human mind can fathom. The carnival freak show theatrics and achingly personal moments of humor and pain clash perfectly. The voice of the 75-year-old protagonist and narrator, John Perry, is pitch-perfect. Each experience, stranger than the last, is relayed with the bemusement of someone with enough years to no longer be surprised that the world can still surprise him. This reserve allows him to truly appreciate the good things that come his way amongst all of the bad. As a reader, I was treated to the first sci-fi novel in a long time that managed to keep a step ahead of me, continually surprising me at every turn. From the moment that Perry leaves earth, the unexpected came fast and furious. Scalzi is incredibly empathetic toward his characters, but harbors no illusions about how horrible the universe can be. Just when I thought I had a grasp on things, Scalzi introduces a character who changes everything. A masterpiece that's funny, serious, dark, light, tragic at once — and always fundamentally optimistic.

The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi. Some sequels continue the ideas of the original work, while others turn turn everything upside down. For better or worse, this is the first sort — made somewhat less distinctive by Scalzi's decision to forego the first-person perspective for a nuetral omniscient narrator. At times it reminded me of the best kind of Star Wars tie-in fiction, which is rather less than I was expecting. Still, moments that are uniquely Scalzi's trickled through. The first came early in the book when Jared Dirac, one of the newest of the solemn and silent Special Forces solder, passed on a bad joke a shuttle pilot had shared with him involving Sherlock Holmes and a tent to a hatchmate who responded by laughing hysterically out loud. Like Old Man's War. the personal stories of these characters are always prioritized ahead of the plot. If the villain is a bit mustache-twirling, his actions put the protagonists into impossible situations which result in consequences that Scalzi plays out meticulously. His characters do brutal, horrible things but operate from a place that regards them as fundamentally decent. He made me fall in love with them and acutely feel each loss. I can't wait to read The Last Colony, which I'm going to buy as soon as I can.

Re: Books you've read in 2008

I'll definitely pick up "Android's Dream" soon. I've yet to have a bad experience with any Scalzi fiction. The pace he turns novels out is staggering. I liked "The Last Colony" quite a bit more than "Ghost Brigades," partially because I prefer Perry's perspective to the more conventional third-person of "Ghost Brigades" and partially because it ventures into fresher territory. I also highly recommend "Zoe's Tale", which tells roughly the same story as "Last Colony" from Zoë Boutin's first-person P.O.V. I actually liked that take on the story better than the original, even though it forces on the characters at the expense of the deeper, more intricate plotting of "Last Colony". And it's not a complete retread, since the characters' stories diverge quite significantly at a few key junctures in the story.

Since last update:
The Last Colony by John Scalzi. If The Ghost Brigades merely continued the ideas explored in Old Man's War, this novel takes that world and turns it upside down. The second book told from John Perry's first-person perspective, the novel begins in a rural community on an unexceptional colony where Perry is a low-level government administrator. He has married Jane Sagan, the protagonist of Ghost Brigades, who now serves as law enforcement in the same municipality. Though Scalzi takes his time getting to the main plot, the telling is so textured and rich it doesn't drag the book down. And by the time Perry and Sagan find themselves leading a unique colony in circumstances that prove more unique with each successive revelation, the book has shifted into high gear—and just keeps shifting higher with each new chapter. As events gather momentum that may affect the fate of the entire species, Scalzi regularly writes his protagonists into seemingly inescapable corners. Only at two points does the resolution come across as artificially convenient. The final couple chapters are brilliant; to say anything more would ruin surprises that deserve to remain unspoiled.

Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi. This book, despite marketing materials and blurbs that take great pains to label it a "compelling stand-alone novel," is a retelling of The Last Colony that covers up to about halfway through its fifteenth chapter. Given that so much of the ground covered is substantially the same, I suppose the biggest shock is not even that the book is excellent, which it is—but that it is even readable at all. For two-thirds of the novel, John Perry (who narrated The Last Colony) has a better vantage point for the major events of the story. But Scalzi leverages that limitation to devote more time to character development. And the last third of Zoë's story provides a front row seat for the biggest untold story The Last Colony, a story that is at least as compelling as anything Perry's story has to offer. And seeing this world through Zoë's eyes makes the Old Man's War universe richer; though her we gain a better appreciation of John Perry, for instance, because her take on her adoptive dad isn't filtered through his restraint and modesty. And despite the vast canvas on which this story takes place, a canvas that made The Lost Colony feel epic, Zoë's take feels incredibly intimate. So much of what she focuses on is rooted in the mundane banalities that are also common to the world we live in. At one point, her adoptive mom Jane notes, "Living comes naturally to you. More naturally than to some of the rest of us." It was a statement that spoke volumes about both of them, and she absolutely right. Because in the final third of book, there are two major points where Zoë's tale diverges from her father's. Both times she is called on to make decisions that affects who lives and who dies. And both times she does something completely unexpected. In a universe of pawns, she's been on more chess boards than most. Perhaps because of that, she refuses to treat those around her as anything but induviduals. As a result, The Last Colony impressed me, but Zoe's Tale moved me.

The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson. Anderson's everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to Krypton's end-of-days makes for an engaging page-turner of a story despite workman-like prose and shallow, archetypal characterizations. It couldn't have been easy to stitch together so many disparate explanations for what destroyed Superman's home planet, but Anderson manages to weave them into a cohesive and logically-consistent whole. Part of the fun of the book comes from guessing which of the many cataclysms set to destroy the planet will actually do the job. Because so many are a consequence of preventing previous cataclysms or the ongoing political strife that quickly engulfs the plan, each new threat rolls out more organically that you'd expect. The final product is very much in the vein of an old sci-fi magazine serial, and unfortunately never strives to be anything more. Those looking for a Jor-El sophisticated and philosophical enough to think up either the "son becomes the father" speech or "they can be a great people" speech from Superman: The Movie will be left disappointed.

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Trying to remember what I've been reading lately...

The Worm Ouroboros, by ER Eddison. If not for LOTR's popularity, this would probably be THE canonical British fantasy novel, but it can never be as popular as other books because it's entirely written in Jacobean English. The prose is quite beautiful and the story's pretty much everything you want from a fantasy novel, although from a much more "Norse" perspective than some might be comfortable. There are no modest Frodo and Sam types to ground the adventure - it's all about doughty heroes and scheming villains throwing their weight around with great deeds and taking joy in the glory of war.

Elak of Atlantis, by Henry Kuttner. A collection of a few short stories written in the wake of Robert E. Howard's death to give readers more in that Conan vein. Kuttner's one of my favorite writers but while this isn't a bad book, his Elak stories feel vaguely unfinished, as if he had all the trappings of the genre down but wasn't putting his heart into it. The book also includes as a bonus a pair of obscure stories about a guy named Prince Raynor and these are rather better. Moodier and more unsettling, with lush descriptions the Elak stories miss.

Outlanders: Exile to Hell, by "James Axler" (Mark Ellis). This is the first book in one of those long-running Gold Eagle series. This one is post-nuclear action mixed with a lot of "X-Files" mythology. Those little gray Roswell bastards have conquered the world and it's up to the good guys to fight back. It's a lot of fun, although it's rather like the first issue of a comic book in that it covers the heroes' "origins" and sets up the situation but doesn't resolve anything.

Temple, by Matthew Reilly. This was a good choice for the airplane flight. There's this incredibly powerful element that fell to earth in a meteor hundreds of years ago and now the U.S., Germany, and a bunch of neo-Nazis are racing to find it so they can build a bomb that can blow up the entire planet, but the ancient Incans found the stuff, carved it into an idol, and hid it in a booby-trapped temple deep in the jungle. I think Reilly's books are remarkably stupid but they push the stupid so hard that you get to not caring and just enjoying the ride. Then again, I'm probably too forgiving

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Currently I am listening to:

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

On my list to read:


Wicked

Son of a Witch

Sex Lives of Cannibals

Getting Stoned With Savages

Re: Books you've read in 2008

The Lies of Locke Lamora

I highly recommend if you're a fan of G.R.R. Martin although its not as "heavy" as that but not all that "light" either.

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Ratings 0-4 stars, most recent first:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach:

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy:

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin: 1/2

Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America's Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang by William Queen:

The Shack by William P. Young: Zero Stars

No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy:

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams:

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini: +

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer: 1/2

The Pesthouse by Jim Crace:

Jon

Re: Books you've read in 2008

Last update of 2008! See y'all next thread.

Since last update:
Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi. This was a problematic read for me. Like Scalzi's other books, it flew by. It was at least as hilarious as anything the late great Douglas Adams came up with, garnered a higher frequency of audible outbursts of laughter from me than any book in recent memory. And I absolutely loved the aliens, from the first page to the last. About as original as you can get biologically speak, personality-wise they're about what you'd expect from a species versed in human culture from old TV and radio broadcasts, except nicer. The first two-thirds of the book are a great sci-fi comic romp. And then something really horrible and tragic happens. It's not the abrupt shift in tone that bothered me; it's how the victim of that tragedy was treated through the rest of the story. Much like the Terri Schiavo case, Scalzi explores the gray area between life and death. And I was morally troubled by the conclusions drawn. If you agree with his point of view, the ending probably comes across as something beautiful. If you don't, the exploitation will seem way too ugly to quite get over. That blemished what is otherwise another terrific story from my newest favorite author.

Star Wars (r) Millennium Falcon by James Luceno. If you're really, really interested in the story of what happened to the Millenium Falcon between the day it was manufactured and the day Han Solo won it gambling, this novel's for you. Otherwise, it's probably going to be a pretty big disappointment. Conceived to be a character-driven story like Troy Denning's 'Tatooine Ghost', the sheer bulk of Luceno's mythology for the ship pushes the main characters to the margins. Han and Leia's granddaughter Allana was my favorite thing about the lackluster Legacy of the Force story arc, and she was my reason for buying this one. In what may be a first for Star Wars tie-in novels, she's an honest-to-God kid interested in childish things instead of a Jedi robot pre-programmed with an overburdened sense of responsibility. The story involving the Falcon's first pilot also more or less kept my attention. The big reveal of the mystery at the heart of the story is unimaginably lackluster. The best way to approach this one is with low expectations.