Books you've read in 2010 (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

My wife and I loved the Shadow Children series, by Margaret Haddix. My comments on that were what prompted Adam's recommendation of Hunger Games.


I also suggest The City of Ember, People of Sparks, and The Diamond of Darkhold (not City of Yonwood, which was mostly lame).

 

[Matt^Brown]

Originally Posted by Adam Lenhardt I wouldn't be a voracious reader today if my dad hadn't read with me when I was in grade school.

Thanks Adam but I play so many video games with both of my kids I feel like I have to do something to help them out. Honestly both of them really enjoy reading and I just do my best to help promote this in whatever way I can.

 

[Matt^Brown]

Originally Posted by DaveF

My wife and I loved the Shadow Children series, by Margaret Haddix. My comments on that were what prompted Adam's recommendation of Hunger Games.


I also suggest The City of Ember, People of Sparks, and The Diamond of Darkhold (not City of Yonwood, which was mostly lame).

Thanks Dave for the recommendations and I will put it on our list.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Just finished Mockingjay. Not at all what I expected; while it doesn't repeat the second book's mistake of repeating the Hunger Games all over again, it doesn't pay off the cliffhanger ending of the second book like I thought it would. This is a character driven book, concerned primarily with how Katniss Everdeen now compares to the girl she was at the beginning of the first book, and how the difference between the two affects her understanding of the world. It presents a perspective in which war is terrible but sometimes necessary, the inevitable consequence of powerful people in better times (sometimes very long ago) who were too small or selfish or passionate or greedy to take the steps necessary to avert it. Perhaps more cynically, Collins implies that peace is a natural consequence of war and war is a natural consequence of peace, because generally speaking those who have experienced war would never do anything to start one and those have experienced only peace wouldn't know better than to avoid one. This book does a better job presenting adulthood to a young adult audience than any other book I've ever read. It might be the only one that's really tried. Collins avoids both the necessary comfort of a comedy and the necessary catharsis of a tragedy with a more complex ending that provides bitter, hard won solace: Life is not easy, and metes out losses and failures that seem to be unbearable until we survive them. It is a chisel, and each thing it cruelly chips away helps define the person who remains. Most importantly no matter how horrible the things in our pasts, if we endure we can find something worth living for in our futures. Times are a lot worse now than they were when I was in the target age group. I'm sure there will be a lot of kids in families facing foreclosure and with parents who can't find a job -- along with the children who (even if times were good) face all of the terrible calamities no child should have to face -- that will take more comfort for this book than they would have from a happily ever ending. When I was younger, I read Madeleine L'Engle's An Acceptable Time and came across a quote that's stayed with me ever since: "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 book embraces a very similar philosophy.

 

[Keith_R]

I just finished The Aquariums of Pyongyang, a real life account of a boy who at the age of nine is locked up in one of North Korea's infamous prison/concentration camps with his entire family. I enjoyed it and found it to be an interesting read on a subject that many people here in the west tend to ignore.

 

I just started Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Lazy, and Dumb by Denis Leary and so far I love it. I've always been a fan of his comedic style and love "Rescue Me", so I'm finding the book hilarious.

 

After this I'm thinking of picking something up on the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge or maybe a travel/cultural book on someplace to inspire my next big trip (Japan?!)

 

[Max Leung]

I just finished "The Unincorporated Man" - it's an okay read. Simple in style and heavy on exposition - lots of monologues just like in Inception!

 

Now I'm starting Peter F. Hamilton's Evolutionary Void - 3rd book in the trilogy that just came out. A huge sprawling space opera that is really cool and awesome in scope - and also a complex plot with hundreds of characters - or so it seems to me hehe. A huge change from the simple Unincorporated Man! I'm really looking forward to the conclusion of the series.

 

[Keith_R]

I finished Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Lazy, and Dumb by Denis Leary yesterday. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Now I am looking for my next read.

 

[DaveF]

A friend lent me three books by Jim Butcher. A "here, give these a try". I took them, thinking they looked a bit, uhm, juvenile? dopey? uninteresting?

 

I read the first, "Stormfront : Book 1 of the Dresden Files", and was knocked out! A great read! A wizard in Chicago, barely making ends meet doing PI-type work for people to find missing dogs and kids, and some occasional pickup work for the police, when "weird" stuff happens. And then some really nasty weird stuff happens and he's in over his neck, tussling with the local Vampiress / Brothel misstress, the head mafioso, and on a side gig helping a woman find her missing husband. It's an unrelenting read, keeping up the pace, the action, the little twists all the through. The universe is both conventional and fresh: it's bog-standard fantasy but it's got it's own particular take wizardry.

 

I finished it and grabed the second book, excited to read the next "Dresden Files" book! Ack! It's a completely different series: "Calderon's Fury: Book 1 of Codex Alera" Good gravy. This looks like completely derivative swords and sorcery fantasy, but I give it a go. And it is, but in the best possible way. Adolescent boy in out of the way farmland being raised by his aunt and uncle has his unique handicap in a world of magic. And unexpectedly he's caught in a fight for his life, which becomes a fight for everything he loves. And by grit, gumption, and wits he perseveres and turns his "handicap" to a strength. Butcher writes with a compelling concision. It's one scene to the next; descriptions are necessary but don't linger past what's needed to continue the story. Again, the universe has its own rules, both familiar and fresh.

 

I finished it and grabbed the third book; fortunately it was the followon to Calderon's Fury, "Academ's Fury". It picks up with the protagonist a few years later, and continues the story from the first book.

 

Now I've got Butcher in my Wish List on Amazon and am thinking about getting him on audiobook for the next driving vacation! Excellent fun for the fantasy fan!

 

[mattCR]

Just finished "An American Assasin" Vince Flynn. The last few Mitch Rapp novels have been overly political with a lot of political infighting that made them less interesting to me. They were good, but often the mouthpiece of the author's political views. But "American Assassin" is like a Rapp novel from a few years back; good rough spy action, some great cloak and dagger, and good characters. Imagine it as a prequel to all other Rapp books, about his first mission as a spy, how he was recruited, etc. There is a moment in the latter half, which by it's face should NOT be funny, but the way Hurley reacts had me howling with laughter, I thought I was going to cry I was laughing so hard "Tecumseh Sherman! Nope! I lied!" Just rolling. Great book for fans of original Rapp novels.

 

[Paul D G]

Originally Posted by Henry Gale

Halfway though Justin Cronin's "The Passage".


I won't try to describe it, several folks have done a swell job of that at Amazon.

My prediction is that in a couple of years there will be some very excited posts at HTF about the movie version of this book.


Of course, well before then this thread will have been archived.

Just finished this myself this morning. Really enjoyed it, tho at times, I felt like I was reading tv series like The Fugitive or Incredible Hulk. You know, where the lead character wanders the country and in each episode they meet up with some people, deal with an issue, then move on. The Haven section reminded me of this the most. It felt like a self contained story.

 

[DaveF]

Twilight - I needed a book to download from my library's audiobook service to get it figured out and working with my iPod. Twilight was the first available book that I had some interest in, so I listened to it over the past week. Given the seemingly huge interest in this series the past several years, and since I enjoy fantasy fiction, I thought it worth a go.


Twilight is no Harry Potter.


Despite having read a bit about before, and reading some reviews on the movies, I was still surprised at how it was nothing more than teenage-girl romance -- with a vampire. I was also surprised that the heroine was substantially passive; this is the Disney's 1940s Snow White view of a lead female, rather than 1990s Beauty and the Beast. It also played havoc with the vampire mythos, making them essentially invicible creatures. As we know, Superman without Kryptonite is a dull idea, so Vampires with no weaknesses are also a boring idea.



Not my sort of book. Won't be reading the rest of the series.

 

[mattCR]

Just finished "Pathfinder"



Stunning. I could not put this book down from the time I started, the 650 pages rip by so fast it'll make your head spin. I lost a lot of sleep waiting to see what happened next. OSC's best work in years. Fantastic work.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Good to hear, Matt. OSC is still an excellent writer, even if his political opinions (and assumptions) made the Empire books frustrating to read. I'll definitely be checking that out.

 

[DaveF]

I'll put that on a read-list. I've got his 5th Ender's Game novel, about Bean, on audiobook to listen over holiday driving.


Still got "Wizards of Langely" and "Tipping Point" staring at me from last Christmas (sigh). I started Tipping Point it immediately felt like a junk-science book, so I've not gotten back to it. And Wizards is dauntingly dense. Had hoped to finish the year's books before new books appear.


Well, I did recently finish the previous Clive Cussler novel, "Arctic Drift". What can I say: if you like the adventures of Dirk Pitt, then you've got to read this one. But it felt like the weakest of Cussler's books. This history mythos was not that engaging and not tightly woven into the main story as his better novels do. Cussler has a new novel out, which I hope is stronger. Remarkable, so do Grisham and Clancy. It's like a throwback to the 90s

 

[mattCR]

There is nothing political about "Pathfinder"... a lot of very interesting moral choices, though... and tons of mind-bending time travel. But the core concept is one that hits on something I had not thought of at all, but once it was said in the book, I realized it had such a ring of truth to it it's hard to dismiss..



Colonists from earth head to another planet. there are some things that happen on the way I won't spoil. But one thing happens that I had never thought of. They run into a planet that is "habitable" but because it is "habitable" it already has some habitation... wildlife, bugs, etc. The pilot isn't informed until there, but the first task they have is to destroy almost everything that lives there, to prevent a competing biota to make sure that nothing present on the planet can really compete with the humans, and so that earth bound animals, plants, etc. can come to take control of the planet. I had never thought of that as a reality, but once they laid it out, and how the concerns over competing bugs, predators, disease..



Really, it's his best work in years. I loved The Ender set, Empire is not a fav, but "eh" too political; Ender's Shadow were fun but lesser works. This is really interesting ground here, it's a very different concept. You may find yourself re-reading the same chapter a couple of times to get the idea of what is being said.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I know OSC has a teenage daughter himself, which bodes well for his first foray into the young adult market. I find that most of the best writers for a YA audience have a young adult in the house, so they're writing to what these older kids actually want instead of their vague remembrance of what they wanted at that age.

 

[mattCR]

He has samples up at IGMS.



Some good stuff.




http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=issue&vol=i19&article=_001


BTW, a strong plug for IGMS as a Christmas gift.. Card contributes too, but I've found a lot of short stories through IGMS that you don't find elsewhere, and Short Stories in the means of Fiction are a rare and sometimes great wealth. IGMS is incredibly cheap, and a great value (IMHO)

 

[DaveF]

I'm listening to Ender's Shadow on audiobook: This is one of the better read audiobooks I've heard; though my range is relatively small. But if OSC's books are generally read / performed this well, it makes a good case for "reading" his books in audio form.

 

[mattCR]

OSC makes sure all of his audiobooks are read by a cast. If you like those, you're hearing what you get on all of them. He largely uses the same reading pool. It's generally 4-8 actors who read parts or perform the story. I often find myself buying the book, ripping through it, and since I have an audible membership, grabbing the audiobook if I like it. I've found sometimes his audiobook gives me a completely different take on the novel, because of how things are emphasized or not.. they are really great stuff, and I wish more audiobooks were done in that fashion.

 

[DaveF]

Yes. I really like the cast approach for this book. It does a great job pulling out the alternate narratives. And the cast is more than competent, bringing some nuance to the roles. I'm thinking of getting an Audible membership next year; I'll keep OSC books in mind if I do.