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| 0060530928
| 9780060530921
| 0060530928
| 4.16
| 548,747
| Sep 30, 2008
| Sep 30, 2008
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it was amazing
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As I've said before, Neil Gaiman is one of the very few authors whose books I'll pick up without reservation. I can always be sure that I'll enjoy wha
As I've said before, Neil Gaiman is one of the very few authors whose books I'll pick up without reservation. I can always be sure that I'll enjoy what he does, so I always look forward to new work. I am happy to say that this book is no exception. It's even made news recently - it won the Newberry Medal for Children's Literature, a very prestigious American literary prize. So good for you, Neil.... It's a well-deserved medal for a book that follows in the footsteps of Kipling's The Jungle Book. It's a book that can appeal to young readers and adults alike, without being condescending or patronizing, something that many writers for young readers have trouble with. As can usually be expected from books aimed at young readers, it's heavy on the themes of growing up, learning your place in the world, and eventually deciding who you want to be. The means by which this book does it, however, are slightly different. The first line was enough to get me hooked: "There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife." Ooo. Shivers. The story begins with a gruesome triple murder, as all good childrens' books do. But the intended fourth victim, a young toddler, manages to escape the bloodbath and wander, quite innocently, up to the graveyard on the hill. There, amidst tombs and graves that had lain there for centuries, he is saved from certain death and given protection by a most unusual new family: ghosts. The boy, rechristened as Nobody Owens, or Bod for short, is raised by the spirits of this tiny world through the intercession of Silas, a mysterious individual who straddles the boundary between the living and the dead. As far as places to grow up go, it's not a bad one. He does end up learning some rather old-fashioned English from those who died half a millennium ago, and wanders around in a grey winding sheet instead of proper clothing, but he is safe there. He has the Freedom of the Graveyard, a gift from the ghosts that allows him the protection that only the dead can offer. As Bod grows up, he learns the tricks that ghosts can do - how to fade from sight, or to rouse fear and terror, how to walk through walls. But he also learns that he's very different from his adopted community. Their lives are ended, their stories are done. He is alive, and as he gets older, that difference becomes more and more vivid. While he may live among the ghosts, he is not one himself. Not yet, anyway. But there are those who would like to make him one. The mysterious murderer who destroyed Bod's family, a man named Jack, is one of many wicked men who would see Bod dead. He may have lost the boy once, but he and his confederates are determined to find him again. There is a prophecy, you see, and they mean to see that it's stopped. And once Bod learns about his family's fate, he becomes equally determined to see justice done. The book is really good. It's a bit simple for an adult audience, and there were a few plot points that I was able to predict pretty quickly. But the book isn't really aimed at us - it's aimed at the younger reader, around eleven or twelve years old. Such readers don't quite have the experience to know that, say, when a new character is introduced two-thirds of the way through the book, that's a character to be wary of. It's the kind of book that's best read to people,and that's how Gaiman promoted the release of the book, by doing public readings of it. As I said before, it dwells on the theme that most books of this genre do: growing up. As Bod gets older, as he starts to feel the pull of the outside world, he understands that he can't stay with his family forever. The dead don't grow, they don't change, but young people do - often very radically in a very short span of time. While it is perhaps a stretch to compare parents to dead people, there is certainly a vague parallel to be drawn here. As adults, we don't change very much, at least not unless we have to. We're set in our ways and our beliefs. They've served us well, and if there's no reason to go mucking about with them, then they're better off left alone. Kids, however, are malleable and ever-changing. They go through phases and changes and switch from adorable little tyke to abominable little teenager with alacrity. Eventually, they have to discover who they are, and the only way to do that is to leave. The nice thing about Bod is that, while he does get into trouble and disobey his guardians, he is, on the whole, obedient and self-aware. He understands that his freedom - indeed his very life - is a gift to him from the graveyard. The ghosts there taught him what he knows, and made sure that he lived through the traumas of childhood and the machinations of men who wanted him dead. He appreciates what his guardians have done for him, even as he prepares to leave them. It's a good message, slipped in with the general motif of the challenges of growing up, and one that I hope young readers absorb. It's easy for a young person to look at the adults in his or her life and think of them like the ghosts in this book. Yes, their lives aren't very exciting anymore, and yes they tend to be overprotective and kind of a pain in the ass. But it's for a good reason, most of the time. Thanks to them, you have all the possibilities of life laid before you. And it won't be easy, living. But you should do it while you have the chance.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Feb 04, 2009
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Feb 04, 2009
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Hardcover
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| 0143038257
| 9780143038252
| B004P3S672
| 3.66
| 358,265
| 2006
| Jan 30, 2007
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it was amazing
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There are times when people recommend books to me, saying "You need to read this," or, "I think you'll enjoy this book," and I take their recommendati
There are times when people recommend books to me, saying "You need to read this," or, "I think you'll enjoy this book," and I take their recommendation seriously. I'll put it on my Amazon wish list and then go on with my life. If I see it on the bookshelves, and my mood is right, I might pick it up. I take recommendations seriously, of course, but I know that they're usually not imperative, in the same way that, say, a doctor recommends quitting smoking because your lungs resemble overcooked corned beef hash. In this case, however, the recommendation was done by my stepfather, who gave a copy of this book to everyone for Christmas. Seriously, we were opening presents on Christmas morning, and by the time I picked up his present, the whole room chimed in with, "Three Cups of Tea!" Which, indeed, it was. To me, this counts as high praise and an imperative recommendation. I don't usually buy books for people unless I'm damn sure they'll like it, and I have never bought multiple copies of the same book to give to everyone I know. Even though this was a book I probably never would have bought for myself, I bumped it up in my reading queue and proceeded to devour it in a few days. Now I understand. This is the story of Greg Mortenson, an American man with a passion for climbing, and his story begins with a failure. He wanted to climb K2, the second-highest peak in the world and arguably one of the toughest, as a tribute to his sister who had died some time before. He attempted the climb in 1993 but did not succeed. Indeed, on his way down the mountain, he got lost, and getting lost in that part of the world was close to a death sentence. In the cold and rarefied air, where he couldn't be certain of living through the night, Mortenson's life was saved by a tiny village called Korphe in northern Pakistan. The residents of Korphe took in this starving, half-frozen American man and helped him get well enough to return home. They showed a stranger great compassion, sacrificing resources that they would need for themselves in order to help a stranger. That in itself would make for a great story. But what happened while in Korphe is the trigger for everything that came next. While the elder of the village, Haji Ali, showed his village to their guest, Mortenson was stunned by their poverty. Women and children died young, from diseases and problems that are unknown to us in the west. They had no electricity and no running water, and lived lives that were unforgivably hard. But what struck him hardest was the children trying to learn. They had no school - the government of Pakistan was extraordinarily cheap when it came to funding education in its more far-flung villages - but the children were still trying to learn. They would sit outside in the cold and the wind, scratching their numbers in the dirt, trying to learn the lessons that their part-time teacher left for them. Upon seeing that, Mortenson made a promise to Haji Ali and the village of Korphe: he would build them a school. I imagine that, looking back on that moment, Mortenson himself is probably amazed by how radically those few words - "I will build a school." - would change not only his life, but the lives of thousands more people around the world. The book is an account of how Mortenson went about building the school for Korphe, and what resulted from that effort. Just getting that school built was a challenge, financially, personally and spiritually. In addition to the basic fund raising problems that would accompany any such effort, he also had to deal with haggling in a foreign land, keeping other villages from stealing his resources to build schools for themselves, religious fatwas against him, and the discovery that before he could build a school, he would have to study up on bridge-building. Indeed, even once he got all the material into the village, there were cultural divides that put the whole process in jeopardy. In order to fulfill his promise to Haji Ali and the people who had helped make the school possible, Mortenson had to learn how to work with the people of northern Pakistan, and that's where the story gets interesting. He did not come to them as a savior. He came to them as a partner. He paid special attention to observing their customs and respecting their ways. Though not a Muslim, Mortenson learned how to pray as a Muslim and how to use the tenets of Islam to ensure that he didn't sabotage his own efforts. He made it very clear that the school he built - and all the schools that came afterward - were not his schools. They were built by and belonged to the people of those villages, the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan. By helping them help themselves, Mortenson became a figure of hope for many remote and uneducated parts of Central Asia. His charitable works aside, there is another level to this story, one that the writers take great pains to illustrate. When 9/11 hit, many people's first reactions - including mine - were rage. And we thought of our response the way nations throughout history have: a violent one. Planes and guns and bombs, that's what would show them who's boss! But as time passed, and the initial rage wore down, it became pretty clear that violent retaliation probably wouldn't work on the kind of people who were willing to kill themselves in the name of ideology. There was no way that military attacks would eradicate terrorism. They might allow us to reduce their resources and their personnel, and it looks really good on CNN, but the root causes of terrorism would remain: ignorance and hatred. I remember telling someone that if we want to stop terrorism, we have to eliminate the reasons for terrorism. We have to educate people and raise their hopes for the future. We have to show them an alternative to the mullahs and the radicals and show them that it is better to raise themselves up than to tear other people down. Naturally, in a post-9/11 world, I was mocked for my bleeding-heart, peacenick ideas and told that I didn't know anything about anything. I am gratified to know that I was not the only one thinking that, and even more grateful to know that people like Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute were working with the same goal in mind. By building schools where there were none, by educating women and girls and teaching them to honor their own goals and potential, and by engaging with the vast majority of non-terrorist residents of Central Asia, Mortenson has probably done far more to promote peace in that corner of the world than any military force could. He has not only helped people help themselves, he has shown the compassionate, generous side of America that the proponents of radical Islam ignore. Thousands of students have passed through those schools, which means that there are thousands fewer people who might be willing to die in the name of a warped terrorist ideology. It's a great book, which opens a vivid window into a part of the world that most Westerners greatly misunderstand. It illustrates the wide variety of cultures and peoples that live in Central Asia, and the cultural history that has given rise to such a potential for conflict. The writing is very engaging, and there were a few points where I thought that the landscape descriptions were worthy of Tolkien - high praise indeed, I should think. However, if I do have one problem with the book, it does fall with the writing. Aside from its melodramatic turns from time to time (when Mortenson gives a speech to a nearly empty room, you can practically hear the violins in the background), there's a bias problem that bothered me. From the very beginning, Mortenson's co-author, David Relin, admits that he supports Mortenson's agenda in Central Asia. That would be fine if he weren't presenting himself as a journalist, but since he is, I spent most of the book wondering how much of the drama was polished up to make for a more compelling story (which would, in turn, lead to more public support for Mortenson). Indeed, Relin tells in his introduction how Mortenson gave him a list of enemies, saying, "Talk to them, too." But the only actual criticism of Mortenson came from some CAI colleagues who said, in essence, "He just works too darn hard!" Any other enemies of Mortenson's were either non-existent or caricatured, like the mullahs who brought their gangs of toughs to try and stop the building of schools. The opposition to his work was used as a set up to remind us how awesome he was. For example: several times, local religious leaders pronounced fatwas against Mortenson and his organization. Mortenson's supporters in Pakistan then turned to the highest Islamic court in Qom, Iran, for their judgment in the matter. In what was admittedly a very dramatic scene, the court's decision was revealed: Mortenson's work was the kind of work that Allah would have any Muslim do, and there was to be no opposition by any Shia against him. And that was that. As far as we, the readers, know, those angry mullahs just said, "Oh. Okay then, where shall we lay the foundation?" Other than the somewhat messianic tone of the book towards Mortenson, I found it very compelling and enjoyable. It's good to know that there are people like him out there, who are so single-minded in the pursuit of doing the right thing that they will overcome any obstacle in their path to see that it is done. It is also a refreshing view of an all-too-often misunderstood part of the world, a place which we really do need to understand if we ever want to bring the age of terror to a close. So, I recommend this book. I may even put it up on Bookmooch to see that it gets around. But if you're feeling bleak about the future of the United States' relationship with the rest of the world, this will make you feel a little better. Go read. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 12, 2009
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Jan 13, 2009
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1401201911
| 9781401201913
| 1401201911
| 4.17
| 58,659
| 2003
| May 05, 2004
|
it was amazing
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Every culture has its icons. Characters or figures that are recognizable by anybody who lives there, figures that are almost impossible not to know. A
Every culture has its icons. Characters or figures that are recognizable by anybody who lives there, figures that are almost impossible not to know. And America is very good at producing those icons and spreading them worldwide. I remember reading somewhere - I don't remember where at the moment - that the United States' chief export is dreams, and I think there's definitely something to that. Of all the dreams to emerge from the American subconscious over the last century, Superman is one of the most enduring. Show that "S" shield to almost anyone on the planet and they'll probably know what it is. For most of his lifetime, he has stood for Truth, Justice and the American Way, with the third element to that tag line slowly vanishing as writers with a more global perspective take over the character. Regardless of his jingoistic past, Superman still remains a popular American figure. He represents what we would like to be, as a country. Powerful and just, upright and honest, but at the same time kind and generous and, at heart, good. Superman has the power to control the world, but he doesn't - he chooses not to - and we like to believe that it was his small-town, American upbringing that instilled such humility in him. This book examines how things might have gone. In the late '80s, DC Comics introduced their "Elseworlds" imprint, with a pretty simple mandate: take canon DC characters and place them in new situations or environments. This way you could see how Batman might have turned out in an America that had never gained its independence, or what would have happened to the JLA without Superman, or if The Flash had taken the bullet meant for JFK. It opened creative doors, allowing writers to tell new stories about familiar characters without disrupting the regular continuity of the DC Comics line. Of these, Superman: Red Son is one of the best. Mark Millar poses a simple question with a very complex answer: What if young Kal-L's rocket had landed in Soviet Ukraine instead of Kansas? What emerges is a fascinating tale of a Superman brought up under Stalinist philosophy. Still the good man that we know him to be, Superman nonetheless chooses a very different means of interacting with the world. We see from the first few pages that the man cannot stand still - he is constantly in motion trying to save people, not just in the Soviet Union, but anywhere in the world. It is his responsibility, he believes, to keep people safe, much in the manner of Soviet philosophy where the government controls nearly every aspect of its citizens' lives. Taken in by Stalin, Superman eventually rises to lead the Soviet Union to nearly world-wide dominance. Under his rule there are no accidents, no wars and no conflicts. Crime is nearly non-existent, and those who do not mesh well in this well ordered world are mentally reprogrammed until they do. There are dissidents, of course, like the mysterious Batman, a singular force of chaos in Superman's perfectly ordered world, but in the end, even he falls. The only true challenge to Superman's worldwide reign is the brilliant American scientist Lex Luthor, who has devoted his life to freeing mankind from alien tyranny. It's a brilliant take on the myth, with a lot of very familiar characters worked in. The art is gorgeous, with a style and a color palette that evokes thoughts of Soviet-era propaganda posters, yet never fails to be dynamic and fascinating. More important, however, is the message of the story. The idea that comics can have a message is something that a lot of people seem to ignore, fueling the idea that comics are just for kids. The message in Red Son is very important and very, very timely. The story was published in 2003, a time when America was in great pain. We had been badly hurt and wanted to set things right. By doing so, however, we caused far more damage to the world than we had ourselves endured. By trying to fix other people's problems, we created even more, and the harder we pushed, the more the world pushed back. And this was not a new trend - one of the negative labels often affixed to the United States is that of "world policeman." We have a long, long habit of trying to help everyone, whether that is the right thing to do or not. In that vein, the Superman of Red Son, despite being a Soviet, is a reflection of ourselves. He is a man of immense power, who decides to help everybody. His intentions are good, but good intentions are not always rewarded with good results. His world is orderly, yes - crime and violence are nearly unheard-of - but it comes at the price of individual freedom. People are no longer in control of their own destinies with Superman in charge, and while that may be a safe life, it is not one that I would like to live. The political message of this book is subtle, but it's there. More interestingly, it's a message that can be enjoyed by a broad spectrum of political views. If you're a liberal, then it's taking a stance against imperialism, against the imposition of one country's values and politics over others', all in the name of making the world a better place. If you're a conservative, it's a call for individual liberty. A government that provides everything for its people is just another form of oppression - without the freedom to make their own choices, for good or for ill, people are not truly free. In the end it's a complex tale, with no real good guys and no real bad guys. Except for Brainiac, who will probably never be anything but a bad guy. It's a story about the choices we make, both as citizens and as societies, and the understanding that we must have the freedom to make those choices. They may sometimes be the wrong ones, but making mistakes is part of the package. In the end, there can be no Superman to save us. We must save ourselves. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 06, 2009
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Jan 05, 2009
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Paperback
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| 0765354063
| 9780765354068
| 0765354063
| 4.12
| 87,510
| Mar 2006
| May 01, 2007
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it was amazing
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Back in aught-Six I read Scalzi's breakout book Old Man's War and loved it. It had everything - high-end science fiction, philosophy, cool battle scen
Back in aught-Six I read Scalzi's breakout book Old Man's War and loved it. It had everything - high-end science fiction, philosophy, cool battle scenes and a protagonist whose sense of humor reminded me a lot of my friend Jon. The book's premise was very simple - why do we use young people to fight in wars? Because they have the bodies that work best for the task. If that were not an issue, then who would we want? Why, old people, of course. They have the life experience, the patience and the perspective to be better soldiers. In theory, of course. I don't think there's any sci-fi in the world that'd make Dick Cheney into a good soldier. So, it's The Future. Mankind has spread out among the stars, and the Colonial Union is the political organization that keeps them together. Any government needs a military, so the Colonial forces make sure they have the best recruits, all brought from Earth. With some pretty high-tech jiggery-pokery, the senior citizens from Earth's richer nations are made into lean, green fighting machines, capable of performing in ways that make the Marines of our day look like palsey victims. Their minds are transferred from their old, decrepit bodies and put into new ones, grown from their own DNA, but altered to make them better soldiers. It's all very exciting and cool, but at some point, I suppose Scalzi asked himself a question: what happens when someone signs up at age 65, but doesn't make it to age 75 when they're supposed to start their service? Well, we have all this DNA just sitting there, can't let it go to waste, can we? That brings us to the Ghost Brigades, the rather morbid nickname for the Colonial Union's Special Forces. Their bodies are grown from DNA whose previous owners have expired, and modded in more extreme ways than the regular defense force soldiers. Then, when the body is ready, they're woken up. An amazing piece of biotechnology called, rather whimsically, a BrainPal prepares their brains for consciousness, acting as a kind of bootstrap for the emergent personality. It tells them what they're supposed to know, so they don't have to go through the tedious process of learning it all. And, of course, much more. They Special Forces do what the regular Defense Forces can't, and act in ways that their more "ordinary" soldiers couldn't understand. In Old Man's War the Special Forces only came in at the end. In this book, as you might have guessed, they play a much more central role. Charles Boutin is a traitor to humanity. For reasons known only to him, he has sold out the Colonial Union to its enemies, a troika of alien species that would be more than willing to wipe us off the map. The Defense Forces would love to find him, of course, but he's hidden himself among the enemy. So they got the next best thing: a copy of his mind that Boutin had made while researching the BrainPal. In theory, it should work: put this mental backup copy into a "clean slate," a body that has no mind of its own. A Special Forces body. And so, Jared Dirac was born. Decanted. Whatever. It was hoped that when he opened his eyes, he would be Charles Boutin in a new body, and could promptly be interrogated. But it isn't that easy. All Jared Dirac is is a normal Special Forces soldier, a blank slate who is ready to do the job he was, literally, born to do: keep humanity safe. He's sent off to training, with the expectation that he would be just another Special Forces soldier. But he is, of course, much more than that, and the memories that begin to emerge could lead the Defense Forces to their goal, or to destruction.... It's a great book. Tons of fun, although the exposition is a bit heavy-handed in the beginning. There's a whole lot of reminding about what you learned in Old Man's War, and I didn't really need it. That's the thing about recap, though: if you avoid it altogether, you can confuse people who haven't picked up the previous book in a while. Slather it on and you bore the people who have good enough memories. It's a tiny thing, though, well balanced by the awesomeness and imagination of the book. I look forward to finding and reading the next book in the series, The Last Colony. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 04, 2008
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Apr 07, 2008
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0980210704
| 9780980210705
| 0980210704
| 4.21
| 34
| Feb 04, 2008
| Feb 04, 2008
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it was amazing
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The book isn't what I thought it would be. What I thought it would be was an account of Mariah's life, especially her struggles with ALS, also known a
The book isn't what I thought it would be. What I thought it would be was an account of Mariah's life, especially her struggles with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. You see, nearly thirty years ago, she was given two years to live. Even now, most of those with ALS only survive three to five years, so to come this far is an extraordinary feat. Indeed, she does go into detail about how she discovered that she had the disease, and what course it put her life on. (As a note, there's one passage where she describes my uncle Ron's reaction to hearing the diagnosis - "Pack your bags, we're leaving. You're not dying and we have a life to live." My overriding thought at that point - "Damn, my family rocks.") But this book isn't about my aunt, or her own personal struggles. In fact, once she gets through giving us her CV of Trauma, as it were, we don't really hear that much more about it unless it's germane to the topic she's addressing. Which, as you read on, makes a lot of sense. Mariah is a therapist, specializing in Gestalt Therapy - a kind of active, experiential therapy method that postulates that the mind and the body are inextricably interconnected. Healing cannot take place simply by talking about it, there must be thought and feeling and emotion and movement involved. As near as I can tell, which is why I put the Wiki link in there, in case I screwed it up. This woman, who has been dealt a hand that, let's face it, has the potential to be utterly crushing, has spent her life making sure that other people are able to be healed. In learning to face the Bad Shit in her life, she's been able to help others face the Bad Shit in theirs through what she calls "Exact Moments of Healing." "Bad Shit," by the way, is my term. It saves space. Before I go on, let me come clean on this much: I have never been to therapy, counseling, or anything of that nature. So anything I think I know about what goes on there is purely speculation. One of the biggest views of people going into therapy is that there is something Wrong with them. Something that must be, somehow, fixed. In this book, Mariah takes the opposite position - the people who come to her are not people who have problems that must be eliminated. They are people who are trying to be better, but can't. Because, and this is a kicker, your problems can't be eliminated. Not ever. We're all, in some way, broken. Hell, those of you who know why this LJ is titled what it is know at least that much about me. We've all been hurt, blocked, abused, kicked, pushed and shoved to one degree or another. Some of us more, some of us less, and usually not in ways that we entirely understand. And as much as these life experiences suck ass, they're part of who we are. They've made us who we are, for good or for ill. The problem comes when we cannot fully understand these traumas for what they were. We don't know how to deal with them, so they block us up and mess with our heads. What I got from reading this book is that the way to become free of these psychological millstones is to confront them, understand them and accept them. Fold them into your life, give them their due, and then - and this is important - don't let them keep you from being who you want to be. Now, this is really, really, really hard. Gods know it's hard. Most of us never get that chance to look our demons right in the eye and say, "I know you. And I accept you. Now sit down and shut up." The idea of Perfect Moments of Healing is that, through counseling, these opportunities can be created. In her workshops, Mariah has re-created the people and situations that generated the traumas that held her subjects down. She goes into great detail about a variety of different cases, and they're all powerful. With the help of her groups and her students, she's allowed people to confront the horrors of war, abusive adults, indifferent parents and crumbling marriages, and given them a chance to unburden themselves of the shadowy terrors that had been keeping them from enjoying their lives. An interesting facet of her therapy is the focus on self-love. No, not that kind, you gutter-brains. The other kind. The really, really hard kind, where you look at yourself, bumps, love handles and all, and say, "I love who you are." Damn, I got finger cramps just typing that. But it's important to her therapeutic method that her subjects understand that they are indeed worthy of being loved by others, as that is probably one of the most basic needs a human being has. People who've been abused or traumatized or just plain on the pokey end of the Stick of Life have a hard time understanding that, so she reinforces the idea again and again through the book. Maybe, if you're really lucky, it'll sink in. I still have some work to do.... For those of us who aren't so fortunate as to be able to have Mariah figure out how to stitch us back together, she does offer good news - a Perfect Moment of Healing is available to you outside of the therapist's office. By remaining aware of how you're feeling, what you're thinking and what you want to become, you can find moments in life to come face-to-face with your personal traumas and accept them for what they were - something bad that happened to you a long time ago. Something that does not need to define who you are now. These moments aren't easy to come by, I reckon, and if you have some real hard-core Issues in your past, a professional is still the best way to go. But there are always chances out there. I've taken a few myself, from time to time. One time, inside Chris' brain.... "Okay, here's the situation. Now what do we want to do?" "Run like hell." "And we're not going to do it because...?" "...." "Right. Now let's get in there." "But I-" "Shut up, trust me. Get in there." So to speak. Anyway, enough of my babbling. I'm probably mangling what is a very interesting, insightful and thought-provoking book. And I'm not just saying that because the author is Family. I'm saying it because it did make me think, and it'll continue to do so. I saw myself in there a couple of times, and I reckon you will too.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 30, 2008
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Mar 30, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0446606693
| 9780446606691
| 0446606693
| 4.48
| 4,047
| 1998
| Sep 01, 1999
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it was amazing
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This novel is, of course, based off the outstanding graphic novel done by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, and is its equal in every way. While it may not hav
This novel is, of course, based off the outstanding graphic novel done by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, and is its equal in every way. While it may not have the visuals that the comic provided, it adds a depth of detail to the story that the comic simply couldn't reach. For my money, they're both outstanding. And if you can find a copy of the full cast audio book, do it. So, after that gushing praise, what is it all about? It's about the darkest days of the super-heroes. The End Times. The unpleasant future of the DC Universe. In this not-so-distant future, the metahumans rule the world. Not officially, of course - we still have the United Nations and the President and all that, but for all intents and purposes, the "super-heroes" are the masters of the planet. They battle and rumble with abandon, concerned not with truth, justice and the American way, but with who's the toughest guy on the block. Some of them are new, many of them are the children and grandchildren of the heroes and villains of today. They are powerful, they are beautiful, they are perfect. Now law can touch them, and no authority can confine them, and the once-prized concept of human achievement has nearly vanished. From all of this does Armageddon come. Norman McCay, a pastor at a church in Metropolis and a man who's faith has all but gone, is chosen by The Spectre - a spirit of vengeance answerable only to God - to guide him through the events to come. These two witnesses tell our story of how the world became the way it did, and watch as the earth is nearly ripped apart in the battle between super-humans. It's an awesome book. It touches on several very powerful themes, the least of which is the role of the super-human in a human world. When you have guys like Superman, who can bend steel around his finger, what does that do to the achievements of an Olympic weightlifter? How must the drivers of the fastest vehicles on Earth feel when they're outpaced by The Flash? These people can - and have - re-order the universe itself, so how are we supposed to live, knowing that even at our best, we can never come close to matching these living gods? Of course, there is the major theme - the generation gap. The older heroes have left the stage, going into retirement or seclusion, because the world has changed around them. Their kids and their successors have become adults, and they have chosen a different moral path than the heroes that we know and love. Human life is no longer sacred, and higher ideals have been thrown aside. With a definite focus on Superman, the book looks at how one can deal with this - you can either hide from it, or try to force it to revert to the way you remember. Neither option is good, and so a third option must be found. Then of course there is the idea of friendship. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are the iconic trio of the DC Comics universe, and despite their differences they are, ostensibly, friends. While the events of Identity Crisis a couple of years ago nearly cracked that friendship apart, this work tried breaking them up long before. They each react differently to the new world in which they live, and those differences are almost insurmountable. If you're a fan at all of comic books, read this. And read the original graphic novel, because Alex Ross' work is indescribably beautiful. Then find the audio book and listen to that. No pressure. ...more |
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Feb 09, 2008
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 038039586X
| 9780380395866
| 038039586X
| 4.09
| 487,054
| Nov 1972
| Jun 1975
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it was amazing
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This is one of my top five books. Whenever anyone asks me, "What is your favorite book?" this is at or near the top. It was the first adult-length boo
This is one of my top five books. Whenever anyone asks me, "What is your favorite book?" this is at or near the top. It was the first adult-length book I read when I was in Elementary school, and I have every intention of getting my hands on a copy for my goddaughter at some point soon. I remember watching the movie when they used to show it annually on CBS, way back in those days beyond recall.... Why should this book, of all the books I've ever read in my life, stay so dear to me? I have no idea. Perhaps because, even though its main characters are rabbits, it isn't a "talking animals" book. Adams didn't talk down to his readers, and assumed that they were ready to follow Hazel and Fiver wherever they went. And so, unusually for children's literature, there is violence and loss and true danger in this book. Characters die. Unpleasantly. The rabbits live in fear of mankind and the Thousand, and accomplish great things despite. They do what no rabbit had done before, and find a new world for themselves. And, of course, are forced to fight for it. Our heroes, you see, are living an idyllic life in a warren in England. They do what rabbits do - eat, sleep, mate, and entertain themselves. But one rabbit, Fiver, can see more clearly than others. He can sense danger, and grasp the shape of the future, and he knows that any rabbit who stays where they are will certainly die. With his brother, Hazel, Fiver and a small group of rabbits leave their home. They do what rabbits never do - they explore. They go through dense woods and cross streams. They hide among gardens and search for the best place they can find to set up their new warren - a safe place, high in the hills, where they can see all around and the ground is dry. They seek to build a new society, as so many humans have done in our history. And what's more, they try to build the best society that they can. The need leadership, yes, but how much? How much freedom should the ordinary rabbit have to live its life? This question becomes more and more important when they meet the cruel General Woundwort, de facto leader of the warren known as Efrafa. The battle that they have, choosing between personal liberty and the safety of the warren, is emblematic of so many struggles that have gone on in our world, and continue today. Through a tale about rabbits, Adams manages to tell us about ourselves, which is the mark of a great writer. As cynical as I have become in my years, I still find this story to be honest and true. Adams isn't trying to make an allegory or grind an axe. He's trying to tell a good story about hope and perseverance and triumph over adversity, a story with - as Tolkien put it, "applicability" - that we can overlay onto our own lives and experiences. The fact that the main characters are rabbits is incidental. Well, not really. Another layer to this story is the culture that Adams has created. The stories of Frith and El-ahrairah (which, I've just noticed, is misprinted on the first page of the contents in this edition as "El-ahrairah." Weird) are sometimes deep and meaningful, sometimes fun and silly, but always relevant and rich, in the tradition of oral storytelling. There is a language to the rabbits, which is regularly used throughout the book (and one complete sentence in lapine - Silflay hraka u embleer rah. Memorable....) Adams did a lot of research into the social structure of rabbits and their lifestyles, making it as accurate is it could be.... Anyway, every young person should read this. Hell, older people should read it too. Every time I read the story, it moves me. I can hear the voices of the characters clearly and see what they see. I am inspired by the steadfastness of Hazel, the strength of Bigwig and the resolve of Blackavar. I find qualities in these characters that I would like to possess, and that's as good a reason as any to love a book. As a side note, this book is the reason I got into Magic: The Gathering way back in college. For a long time, I thought it was just a stupid card game, with no cultural or imaginative merit. Then I happened across a "Thunder Spirit" card, which had a quote from Watership Down at the bottom: [image] "It was full of fire and smoke and light and...it drove between us and the Efrafans like a thousand thunderstorms with lightning." Still gives me goosebumps. Anyway, I thought, "Maybe there's something to this," and the rest was (very expensive) history.... ...more |
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Jun 11, 2006
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Feb 06, 2008
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0140285539
| 9780140285536
| B002JJC5RG
| 4.01
| 110,075
| 1951
| Jul 1999
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it was amazing
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I have a long fondness for Apocalyptic novels. The Stand was one of my early favorites from junior high school, and I really enjoyed its cousin by Rob
I have a long fondness for Apocalyptic novels. The Stand was one of my early favorites from junior high school, and I really enjoyed its cousin by Robert McCammon, Swan Song. There's something about the End Of The World that just grabs me and won't let go. Maybe it's the thought that, should the world end, I would be one of the survivors. The rule of law would break down, all shackles of modern life would be loosed, and I would finally be free to choose my own destiny. Which, knowing me, would probably be very short and end up with me getting shot by some kind of Mad Max pirate tribe. I can say with some certainty, however, that in this book's scenario I would not be coming out on top. Because I love astronomy. Let me explain. The end of the world came in two parts, one of which was definitely of our own doing. It started with a comet. Or a meteor shower. Or something, but whatever it was, it lit up the sky. Green streaks of light brightened the night skies around the world, and everyone who could go and watch them did so. I'm a sucker for a natural light show, so I probably would have spent the night watching the skies and enjoying myself. And I would have woken up stone blind the next day. That in itself - the vast, vast majority of the human population on Earth being blind - would have been a pretty good apocalypse. Wyndham describes rashes of suicides, accidental deaths and, of course, murder in just the first few days. Without vision, the carefully crafted world we've made kind of falls apart. But it would have been survivable. Co-operation groups spring up pretty quickly, both voluntary and otherwise, where sighted people assist the blind in surviving. It would have been tough, yes, but not impossible. If not for the Triffids. While we don't know what caused the green comet, the Triffids were definitely our fault. Bioengineering gone haywire, the Triffids are ambulatory carnivorous plants with a poison sting that can kill a grown man from ten feet away. And while they're not intelligent, they are remarkably... aware. They follow sound, they learn and co-operate in hunting, and are very difficult to eradicate. But by themselves, they're manageable. Their stingers can be removed, even though they grow back eventually, and they make interesting garden plants. And they're immensely profitable - the oil derived from a Triffid outdoes every other kind of vegetable oil available. In normal times, the Triffids are under human control. Two problems, when put together, make for a truly terrifying end. And an exciting story. Wyndham has created a brave new world for us, with a wide variety of characters who all react to their new situation in different - and realistic - ways. From the girl who believes that the Americans will save her to the man who believes that polygamy is the way to a brighter future, everyone has an idea on how to survive. But first they have to deal with the Triffids.... ...more |
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May 13, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0553575384
| 9780553575385
| 0553575384
| 4.11
| 41,874
| Dec 01, 1997
| Dec 01, 1998
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it was amazing
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Yes, it's a Connie Willis Time Travel Double Feature! And in this book, we are introduced to the lighter side of time travel - something that was sore
Yes, it's a Connie Willis Time Travel Double Feature! And in this book, we are introduced to the lighter side of time travel - something that was sorely lacking in The Doomsday Book. I mean, it's not that the Black Death didn't have its lighter side, it's just the overall it's not so much fun. This book is a follow-up to The Doomsday Book. Not a sequel, really, but it's in the same world, and some of the main characters make appearances in this one. But whereas The Doomsday Book was all about how your image of a far-away place never really matches the reality of it, this book is more about how what you think you know about what's going on isn't actually what's going on. To explain: Ned Henry is an historian, working for the implacable Lady Schrapnell who is determined, against all possible odds, to rebuild Coventry Cathedral exactly the way it was when it was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in 1940. The reason for this goes back to the water-damaged diary of her many-times-great grandmother, who visited the Cathedral in her youth and whose life was changed forever. The credit for this change was given to her sight of an atrocious example of the worst in Victorian art - the Bishop's Bird Stump. Schrapnell has enlisted every historian at Oxford to help get the new cathedral exactly as it was, regardless of their own personal safety and in complete defiance of everything that is known about time travel and its effects on the human body. And so Ned, who is suffering from severe time lag, is sent to recuperate in the Victorian Era, 1888. He has one simple job to do - return an object that was brought through from the past, something that should not have been possible to do. Once he accomplishes that relatively simple task, he has two weeks to enjoy an idyllic life of leisure among the upper crust of English society. Of course, it's never that simple. Which is kind of the point of the book. History is a chaotic and complex thing, one where the ultimate cause of an event can be hard to pin down, and even harder to change. There is no such thing as a non-significant object when it comes to history, and everything is important. Cats and seances and penwipers, fish, maps, croquet, candles and jumble sales - everything affects everything else, and the results of those interactions are sometimes very difficult for us to see. In the course of trying to correct one apparent incongruity, Ned and Verity (another historian, whose beauty pretty much snares Ned from the get-go) discover that they are part of a greater pattern to solve a far greater problem. It's a great book, and a wonderful read. Very funny, too... Pick it up. ...more |
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Feb 21, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0553562738
| 9780553562736
| 0553562738
| 4.03
| 61,088
| Jun 05, 1992
| Jul 1992
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it was amazing
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I honestly can't count the number of times I've read this book. I think this is the fifth time. Or maybe the sixth, I don't know. It doesn't really ma
I honestly can't count the number of times I've read this book. I think this is the fifth time. Or maybe the sixth, I don't know. It doesn't really matter, because it's just as enjoyable, touching and heartbreaking as it was the first time I read it, and that's a hell of an accomplishment. It is the middle of the 21st century and time travel has finally been worked out. A reliable there-and-back-again way to go into the past and come back to the present. Unfortunately, there are limitations. The computer that makes time travel happen, through means I'm not sure even Ms. Willis understands, will not allow for a paradox. This means if you try to go to the past with anachronistic technology, or carrying a disease that could wreak havoc on the population, the interface simply won't open. If you try to place a traveler somewhere where their appearance could cause a paradox, the machine will put them in another place or time - a factor called "slippage" which can put you anywhere from five minutes and a few feet off your mark to years and miles. The machine won't allow you to get anywhere near events of importance. Secondly, the machine won't allow you to take anything through the net. So if you travel to, say, Napoleon's palace and try to rob him blind, the interface won't open until you've got rid of all your booty. Those two factors alone made the time machine economically useless. If you can't profit off it - or change it - what good must it be? A lot of good, as it turns out, if you're an historian. While the machine may not allow you to get anywhere near Hitler, it will allow you to see what life was like in the ghetto in the 30s. The whole of history suddenly became open to real discovery, and places like Oxford were at the forefront of the research. One student, a young lady named Kivrin, has a dream to see the Middle Ages. Despite all the warnings that it was full of filth, disease, superstition, danger and death, she still wants to see it more than anything in the world. The sheer force of her will finds her in the machine, ready to go to the year 1320 to see firsthand what life was like for the average English citizen. She has prepared herself as best she could, but nothing could possibly prepare her for the time and place she ends up in.... And in the present, a new plague has spread around Oxford. It's a new type of flu that seems to have come from nowhere, and it's started to kill. Kivrin's teachers and friends have to race the disease, time and sheer bloody-minded bureaucracy to try and find her and bring her back safely. What is remarkable about the book is the detail. Willis has obviously done a lot of research into not only Medieval Oxford but modern Oxford as well. Since one of the themes of the book is that we don't know nearly as much about the past as we think we do, Willis has gone to great lengths to make sure that we - through the eyes of Kivrin - never know what to expect because our expectations are all totally wrong. And as is so often true about history, the more we know about it, the more interesting it becomes. The Oxford of the future, by contrast, isn't all that futuristic. It looks a lot like the modern world, probably because it's only a couple of decades removed from us. Sure, there have been advances in technology, but the lives of the people aren't much different from ours. Interesting note: the book was published in 1992, well before the age of cell phones, instant messaging and the internet. Because of this, one of the greatest hindrances to getting anything done in this far-future Oxford is that no one can get anyone on the phone. It's a videophone, yes, but most of the characters spend time waiting for phone calls to come through or trying to place calls to people who aren't near a terminal. It's a bit strange, from my modern perspective, to see a world that has pretty much conquered disease and mastered time yet never figured out a means of personal communication better than a land-line. That's just a small thing, though, and as long as you accept that particular bit of alternate-future, you'll be okay. It's a fantastic book, one which I recommend without reservation. The characters are deep and interesting, and the writing really puts you in their world. Seriously. Go get it. ...more |
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Feb 16, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0886779774
| 9780886779771
| 0886779774
| 4.15
| 14,466
| Apr 10, 2001
| Apr 01, 2001
|
it was amazing
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At last we have come to the end of our journey, when all will be explained and all will be resolved. As the book opens, the Other - the operating syste At last we have come to the end of our journey, when all will be explained and all will be resolved. As the book opens, the Other - the operating system for the Grail Brotherhood's mysterious plan for immortality - has been defeated, overcome and overpowered by the truly evil assassin Dread. With his mutant ability to manipulate electronics, Dread has taught the Other how to feel true pain, and now has nearly complete control over the Otherland network. With a nearly limitless number of worlds to choose from, Dread allows his sadistic madness to run wild. But no matter how many worlds he rapes and plunders, there are still those he truly wants to destroy - the Otherland explorers sent by the mysterious half-human Sellars. But those explorers themselves face greater dangers than Dread. Half of them have been thrust back into the twisted realms of Otherland, where the horrors and dangers that had been built into it have mutated into unrecognizable terrors. The other half... they ended up in the heart of the Other's secret dreams. There they must face the eventual death of the network and survive it, if they can. Offline, Sellars has brought all of his players into position. Lawyers, children and old women are his army, and together they will uncover the horrible and heartbreaking truth about the nature of the Other and the evil that has been done to it. I really love this series. As it moves towards its ending, which does involve a lot more explaining than most other books do, it's easy to get swept up in the sheer scale of the narrative. There's a lot to take in by the end of the series, a lot of loose ends to tie up, but it all wraps up rather nicely. More or less. There is a rather major revelation that comes near the end that just kind of... gets written off. I have a sneaking suspicion that Williams might have been able to stretch this series into a fifth book, but it probably would have suffered from Rowling Syndrome - a lot of unnecessary padding in between the important bits. The important thing is that, by the end of the book you really do feel invested in the world that Williams has created. You care about the characters, and you want everything to turn out all right for them. For the good ones, at least. For the bad ones, you want them to get their just desserts, to see them suffer as they have made others suffer. You even find yourself feeling for the Other, which we - and the protagonists - have always believed to be the main villain of the story. It is not, as we find out, and the scope of the villainy that has been done to it is truly astonishing. In his forward to the second book, Williams apologized to his readers about the cliffhanger ending to the first. This isn't really four books, he said - it's one giant book that had to, for various reason, be split into four. The main reason, of course, being that no one would print or buy a 3,500 page hardcover, even if the fine folks at DAW Books were willing to try it. He is right, though - it is one very long story, and thus you can extract a great many things from it, if you want to. There's no one thing that I can say this book is about. In one sense, it is an exploration of the future of the digital world and what it might mean to people. The virtual net of this story would be as alien to us as the internet would be to our grandparents. It has become the sea in which our characters swim, and their main way of interacting with the world. It is only when their ability to go offline is taken away from them that they truly begin to value the world and the identity they've left behind. What's more, it explores how we connect with each other - looking at both the relationships we build in virtual space and the ones we build in the real world, and finding complete validity in them both. There are issues of identity, best shown by Orlando, whose towering Thargor the Barbarian character hides a young teenager with a crippling illness that will kill him long before he's old enough to vote. His best friend has a slightly less unfortunate secret to share - that behind those big, muscular sim bodies, Sam Fredericks is actually a girl. The story explores issues of family - how Renie deals with her father, Long Joseph Sulaweyo, or how little Christabel Sorenson's family react when they find out that their young daughter has been drawn deep into Sellars' conspiracy. And the bonds between mother and child that can never truly be broken. And there are even issues of the very definition of the word "life." If your mind is perfectly copied into a computer, with all its memories and personality intact, is it still you? Are you still human? Are you even alive, in any real sense? The Grail Brotherhood certainly believed so, or they would never have started this project in the first place. But in a system as broad and complicated as the Otherland network, who knows what else might arise to test our definition? The story is about heroism and history, about love and hate, about the unshakable bonds of friendship and the tenuous reliance on people you despise. It's about the lengths to which fear will drive you and the extremes you will encounter when you test that fear. It's about science and faith and looking at the world in ways you never imagined. It's about good, it's about evil. It's about life, really, and what it is about life that makes us want more of it. Now I'm just waxing philosophical. To sum up: this is probably one of my favorite stories in my library. I highly recommend you pick it up, set some time aside, and enjoy it. ...more |
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Mar 28, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1857239903
| 9781857239904
| B0068HXK4M
| 4.07
| 16,106
| Sep 30, 1999
| unknown
|
it was amazing
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This is easily my favorite book in the series, short though the series may be. Otherland is a strange story, really - it's like a hybrid science fictio This is easily my favorite book in the series, short though the series may be. Otherland is a strange story, really - it's like a hybrid science fiction/fantasy tale in that you can easily forget which genre you're in. It's clearly science fiction, in that the whole thing is taking place in a massive computer simulation, but on the other hand, it owes a lot to fantasy - especially the world-crossing aspects of it. Our Otherland heroes have been trapped there for some time now, running through the system with very little understanding of where they are or where they're going. The whole thing is run by a cabal of the world's richest men and women in an attempt to foil Death itself, and was built as their eternal playground. Thus, there are countless worlds to choose from. There are places where you can re-live entire historical epochs, where you can fly in rivers of air or play in a cartoon kitchen. You can be a cowboy in the Old West or a Knight of the Round Table or anything that your mind can conceive - and your programmers can work out. The complexity of this system is such that it is indistinguishable from real life. It is multi-sensory, so you get the full experience of actually being there, with none of the obvious CGI cues that we've come to expect from the virtual world. What's more, the owners of the system have nearly godlike power within it. They plan to not only live forever, but have absolute power while doing so. Two of these simworlds - one original, one derivative - are the reasons why this is my favorite book of the series. The original simworld (not based on any well-known work or historical event) is the House. After being betrayed by the assassin Dread, who has been masquerading as one of their number, Renie, !Xabbu, Martine, Florimel, T4b and Emily are stuck in a kind of... unfinished world. It's a place where the programming hasn't really been settled, and where the unreality of the whole thing can be deadly. They manage to escape by following Dread to a new simulation - a great House that is, in itself, a world. It goes on as far as anyone knows, but is home to countless tribes and nations. Our heroes meet runaway lovers - a cutlery apprentice and a girl from the linen cabinets. They are aided by the Library monks, whose expertise encompasses everything from House history to the minute details of plasterwork. They are nearly killed by attic bandits and hunted by nomadic bands of steeplejacks. Aside from imbuing the House with a deep sense of history and complexity, Williams raises an important point that anyone who has ever played "The Sims" can recognize: what do you do when you start to empathize with a computer-generated being? During their time in the House, they meet people who seem to be genuinely good, perceptive, interesting people, qualities that we don't know how to confidently imbue in real humans, much less coded simulacra. The residents of the House have passions and dreams, they love and hate just as "real" people do. They can't be written of as "just code," because they don't act that way. They help and hinder our heroes just as people out in Real Life might. This brings up an interesting ethical problem: while they can't be sure what their ultimate goal will be, our heroes are pretty sure that the system will eventually have to be destroyed - as far as they know, it is the Otherland system that is keeping them trapped, and their loved ones in comas. Will doing this be, in essence, genocide? By shutting down the Otherland network to save the children in comas, and to save themselves, will they be condemning thousands - perhaps millions - of coded "people" to extinction? Are these "people" really people? After all, the Grail Brotherhood was planning to become immortal code themselves - would they be any less alive than their meat incarnations? While this is not a problem that we have to grapple with yet, it's one that may come up eventually. Tad Williams has done a very nice job in this series of predicting technological advancement, so he may have seen forward on this one, too. The other simworld that makes this my favorite book is a derivative one. This means that it is based on an extant work, much like the Alice in Wonderland world that Paul Jonas goes to, or the bizarre cartoon kitchen from which Orlando and Fredericks had to escape. This world is one of the oldest stories there is, and was the first simworld to be created when the construction of the Otherworld began. It is The Iliad. I've read the original poem a few times, and I'm impressed with it every time. It's a massive story, full of heroes and villains, bravery and treachery, and death. Lots and lots of death. It's an epic poem, and it deserves the title, as it pits nations, men, and gods against each other in what is ultimately a tragic and terrible ten year war. For Tad Williams to use this as the climax for a novel is nothing short of audacious, but he pulls it off wonderfully. Not only does he manage to keep hold of the terrible horror of war that Homer put throughout his poem, Williams integrates his characters into the story, putting them in the roles of key figures such as Achilles, Patroclus, Cassandra and Odysseus. They all want to get into Troy so they can find their way to the Black Mountain, but to do so they must go through the war that has served as the archetype for human conflict for the last few millennia. Their choices, freely made, reflect the choices of the characters they inhabit, which are themselves models for heroes of fiction throughout literary history. In one wonderful scene, Sam Fredericks, who is inhabiting the character of Patroclus, is wondering what to do about her sick friend, Orlando Gardiner, AKA Achilles. He cannot fight, but the Argives need him, and throughout their long friendship as online gamers, it was always Orlando who was the hero. Sam was the sidekick, the buddy, but when you made the movie poster, Orlando's character would always be in the middle of the shot. But much like another Sam in another story, Fredericks knows that heroism isn't just muscles and swords and snappy dialogue. It's about doing what has to be done, even if you don't want to do it. Nearly crippled by progeria, a debilitating childhood illness, Orlando has nonetheless continued to fight on in the Otherland. Now the hero cannot fight, and Sam realizes it's the sidekick who has to pick up the burden. Thus, Sam unknowingly fulfills the destiny of the character she is portraying, puts on the shining armor of Achilles, and goes out to inspire the Argives to fight so that she and her friends might live. The entire Troy sequence is amazing, and every time I read this book, I feel compelled to read The Iliad again. But the series doesn't end there, of course. Suffice it to say we hit a major climax by the end of this book. People are in danger, secrets are revealed, battles are fought... and one of our brave heroes makes the Ultimate Sacrifice. We are brought to the heart of the operating system, the Black Mountain which entombs the Other. The Grail Brotherhood sets their immortality sequence in motion, and the amoral killer Dread makes his bid for virtual godhood. Setting us up for the final book, we are left with our heroes in disarray - divided and lost, dropped into an entirely new environment that is beyond their understanding and forced to cooperate with their gravest enemies for their survival. You may look at this book and think, "Holy cow. 924 pages. There is no way I'm reading 924 pages." But you will, and it'll go a lot faster than you think. Williams has done a great job of making a multi-layered, fast-paced story that you can enjoy on many levels. You can revel in the action and the mystery, you can ponder deep philosophical problems, or you can comb through the great attention to detail and see how much work he must have done to get the Trojan War sequence right. Hats off to you, Tad Williams. ...more |
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Mar 22, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1857237641
| 9781857237641
| B002JJ4DRG
| 4.03
| 16,478
| 1998
| Jan 01, 2003
|
it was amazing
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When last we left Our Heroes, they were caught in the Otherland - an immense virtual reality program built by people with more money than God - with n
When last we left Our Heroes, they were caught in the Otherland - an immense virtual reality program built by people with more money than God - with no idea where to go and no idea what to do. They were lost, confused and had no way out. Oh yes - back before Neo got his clock punched by Agent Smith, Renie, !Xabbu, Orlando, Fredericks and all the other Otherland explorers discover that they are in more danger than they realize - if they die on the network, then they'll die in real life. And, almost right out of the gate, people start dying. Whether they're tiny biologists living among the ants or a lifetime gamer warring against the different factions of a twisted Oz, they die in unpleasant and, ultimately real ways. And it's up to our heroes to not only avoid death themselves, but also to figure out what the hell they're supposed to be doing in there. One of the things I like about this series is that Tad Williams openly admits to stealing - er, paying homage to the great writers of the past. At the end of book one, when all the main characters have been gathered together and are being told about the great dangers they will face, and how they are part of a plan to defeat the Grail Brotherhood and their Nefarious Scheme, most of the people there want nothing to do with it. It's up to Orlando Gardiner, our young barbarian warrior-slash-progeriac teenager to say, "Hey, this the the Council of Elrond! We have a mission here!" Unfortunately, while the Fellowship of the Ring gets a clear mission before leaving Rivendell, the Otherland explorers are scattered before they know what to do, and their main goal is to run for their lives. As this book progresses, they start to learn more about the vast Otherland network, what its nature is and why it was made. They also learn that it is unstable, and possibly a living thing in its own right. Almost immediately, the group gets split up. That is, as all ensemble writers know, the best way to really build a meaty story, and it works really well here. Unfortunately, while there are three groups, the strongest and most interesting characters get put into two of them. Orlando and Fredericks get sent off into a world more bizarre than any online gaming ever prepared them for; Renie and !Xabbu end up in a horribly twisted version of The Wizard of OZ, if Oz had invaded Kansas, taken over, and started a three-way fight between the Scarecrow, the Lion and the Tin Man. This leaves us with the third and largest group being somewhat less interesting than the others. Not completely, of course - we have a blind woman who can sense the information flow of the simulation, a teenage net-freak who only speaks in online slang, a campy death-clown named Sweet William, a Chinese grandmother and an abrasive German woman. They're not bad characters by any means, and each one is special in his or her own right. It's just that most of them were introduced later in the first book, and so we've had less time to get to know them. Putting a more familiar character in that group might have made them more interesting, or it might have overshadowed them. Who knows? One thing that the third group has, however, is a secret - one of them is not who he or she appears to be. One of them has been co-opted by the sociopathic assassin, Dread. The only one with the freedom to go on and offline at will, he has nearly godlike power at his fingertips. And he intends to use it. I can imagine that Tad Williams had a great deal of fun working out these novels, mainly because he created a concept that allowed for incredible freedom in world-building. After all, on a super-powerful VR platform, any conceivable simulation can be created. So whether it is the mythical land of Xanadu, a cartoon kitchen where the groceries come to life at night, a world where people fly like birds, or the legendary land of Ithaca, the settings in these books are only limited to what Williams can think up and work with. What's really interesting is that he seems to take great pleasure in reminding us that we are, in fact, reading a story - he goes so far as to have one character reflect on exactly what kind of character he is. People are reminding themselves that they're not in a story, even though they are, and at the same time recognizing that the entire structure of their virtual universe is patterned on the rules of fiction. It's a strange type of meta-fiction that rewards the careful reader. So, as the book comes to a close, we have some new threads to follow. The Otherland explorers begin to find their purpose and learn about their situation. We've met a strange type of character which exists in many worlds at once - the beautiful, birdlike woman who tries to help Paul Jonas and Orlando Gardiner find their way; the horrible Twins, whose only job is to pursue Paul Jonas wherever he may go. These people can be found around any corner, and the outcome of meeting them is always uncertain. Offline, real-world investigations into the mysterious comas that afflict children begin to bear fruit - a young lawyer named Catur Ramsey is trying to help the parents of Orlando and Fredericks find out what happened to their children, and the search leads him to a strange woman, Olga Pirofski, who may have a vital clue. Renie's father involves himself with some very dangerous people indeed. The police in Sydney find themselves working on a five year-old murder case that will eventually lead them to the malicious assassin/hacker Dread. A mysterious group called The Circle makes itself known to a select few, and reveals its mission - to oppose the Lords of the Otherland and their relentless pursuit of immortality. All through this, those Lords of the Otherland struggle amongst themselves to see who will ultimately control it. The tale becomes stranger with the telling, but I can guarantee - you'll be good and ready to jump right into book three.... ...more |
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Jul 11, 2010
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 1857236041
| 9781857236040
| B0027OYXGO
| 3.93
| 27,982
| Dec 05, 1996
| Jan 01, 1998
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it was amazing
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Let me just start by saying this: the first time I finished this series, I immediately went back and started reading it again. I can't think of any ot
Let me just start by saying this: the first time I finished this series, I immediately went back and started reading it again. I can't think of any other series that I've done that with. This is one of Tad Williams' "economy-sized manuscripts," similar to his fantasy classic Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. Similar in size and scope, anyway - four giant tomes chock full of all things awesome. It's a series of grand scope, amazing scale and great imagination, well worthy of your time. Seriously, top-shelf stuff here, people. It begins with the children in a near-future world. Renie Sulaweyo, a teacher in South Africa, has a brother in the hospital. He, like many other children around the world, has gone into an inexplicable coma, the causes of which defy medical science. The only clue she has is that the outbreaks of these comas coincide with the availability of access to the Net - a virtual reality internet that is what Second Life dreams of becoming. Here, depending on your equipment, you can live in a virtual world that is more vibrant and exciting than anything the real world can offer. And you can do it in full sense-surround 3D. Renie's brother, Stephen, engaged in the usual mischief that any kid with access to his own virtual universe might do, and finally got caught. Something shut him down, and Renie was determined to find out. With the assistance of her student, a Bushman named !Xabbu, Renie uncovers an amazing virtual world, something that puts the best virtual reality to shame. It is the Otherland, a playground for the obscenely wealthy. And it may hold the secret to what has afflicted her brother. That's the short version. There's a ton of other storylines going on in there as well. There's young Orlando Gardiner, who compensates for a crippling illness by being the baddest barbarian on the net. There's little Christabel Sorenson, upon whose earnest desire to help the funny-looking Mister Sellars the entire future of the Otherland rests. There's the aptly-named Dread, an assassin extraordinare whose strange "twist" gives him an edge in all things electronic. And, of course, there is Paul Jonas, a man trapped in an imaginary world, whose escape threatens the greatest dreams of the richest men the world has ever known. All of this, as the series title suggests, centers on the Otherland project, a virtual reality of monumental proportions. It's a world that is more real than the real world is, a world of digitally-created, but very deadly, dangers. The slightest misstep could spell disaster. And just FYI, Otherland predates The Matrix by three years and, kung-fu aside, is a much better story. The really fun part is re-discovering things in this series. There are some things I remember very clearly, but other little details that pop up and make me think, "Oh yeah, I forgot all about that." There's just so much stuff crammed into this series that even after two back-to-back readings, I still let details slip away. So, make a sandwich and find a comfortable place to sit. This'll take a while, but I guarantee - it'll be worth it. ...more |
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| 0943151163
| 9780943151168
| 0943151163
| 4.34
| 10,098
| Jun 1997
| Jul 15, 1997
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it was amazing
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I'm putting these two together, because they really do form one larger piece - the craft of an artistic mastermind. Although perhaps "mastermind" isn'
I'm putting these two together, because they really do form one larger piece - the craft of an artistic mastermind. Although perhaps "mastermind" isn't the best word to use here. What do you call the person that they lock up when they're about fifteen because they keep saying things to their teachers like, "The human body has ten thousand miles of blood vessels in it and I can feel my hate for you coursing through every one?" Or the guy who buys a dog, takes care of it, feeds it, loves it, and then one day realizes that the dog has been spying on him for the CIA for years and buries it in his backyard? Or the angry hobo who lurches up to your car as you wait at the stop light, a bucket of dirty, grey water in one hand and a rotten squeegee in the other and proceeds to molest himself with it, afterward demanding that you gave him change, quote, "For the show" That kind of guy. What would you call him? Whatever it is, welcome to the world of Jhonen Vasquez. Strap yourself in. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is the story of Johnny C., known to his very few friends simply as Nny. Nny is rail-thin, yet something of a fashion plate, and lives in a broken-down house with two evil Styrofoam doughboys, a dead bunny nailed to a wall, and a gateway to a creature of infinite evil somewhere in one of the many basements of the house. In his free time, Johnny kills people in horrible and graphically interesting ways. Not because he's a bad person, necessarily. He does have the wall to feed, after all - a wall that has to be continually painted with fresh blood, lest the Evil come out of it. But he is, by his own admission, "quite horrendously insane." He murders for many reasons, the Evil Wall aside. He murders the people who feel superior to others (while at the same time feeling that he is superior to them). The kills the smug and the self-possessed, the materialistic and the bored, the lowbrows and the posers and the jerks who seem to infest every corner of his world. And while he does kill with great glee and abandon, he occasionally takes the time to wonder if what he's doing is worth it. If murder is all that his life has become. If maybe it would be better off to just end it all and kill himself. Fortunately - or not - he has The Doughboys to keep him company. Two Styrofoam figures, painted by Nny, which talk to him constantly. One urges him to live and kill to his heart's content. The other presses him to commit suicide and leave this world behind. Whichever wins will be freed from his plastic prison and reunited with his evil master. As a balance to them is Nailbunny, which is pretty much just what it sounds like - a bunny rabbit that Johnny bought from the pet store and then one day nailed to the wall. Nailbunny (or at least its floating head) is the voice of reason in Johnny's life, urging him to be suspicious of the Doughboys and all they want. Despite his nihilistic view of the world, Johnny discovers that he does indeed have a purpose in life. Just not a very good one. Johnny is, naturally, hard to sympathize with. Part of that comes from his almost cavalier attitude towards killing, but more than that, he's rather adolescent in his view of the world and how it works. Like so many teenagers, he has yet to grow a buffer between himself and the world, and cannot differentiate malicious acts from merely thoughtless ones. He feels every barb and every sting like hooks in his flesh, and the only way he is able to deal with it is through murderous rage. Reading it as an adult who remembers his teen years, I can certainly see where Johnny is coming from, but at the same time I wish he'd just grow up and learn to live in the world like the rest of us. Which is a statement for which Johnny would no doubt gleefully murder me. One of the major themes of these comics is conformity and humanity's need to follow each other into the abyss. Hypocritical characters dressed in all the latest fashions snub people who are slaves to public opinion. One of the worst offenders, a recurring character named Anne Gwish, embodies the modern Goth poser who shuns everyone while despairing that no one talks to her. Johnny's world is filled with these people and they all need killing. Even people who don't deserve death might end up falling to Johnny. In one of my favorite stories, "Goblins," a man who was chosen at random is strapped to a truly terrible machine, and faces his impending death with enviable conviction. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac reads like an extended teenage revenge fantasy, if a highly philosophical and entertaining one. Eventually you figure out that, as Vasquez himself says, "He's not a loser, he's simply lost." Themes of identity and social connection continue in the book SQUEE'S Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors. Young Squee (whose real name is Todd) is Johnny's neighbor and is featured in the very first JtHM story. Squee is a pitiful child, with parents who resent his very existence and a school that is constantly trying to crush the spirit out of him. Squee lives a life of unending terror as he's beset by nightmares, aliens, his cannibalistic grandfather, openly hateful parents, and a world that never seems to make sense. It is his young burden to have to live in a world created by Jhonen Vasquez. Somehow, though, little Squee manages. Manages to get himself locked into an insane asylum, yes, but manages nonetheless. The second half of the book features Vasquez's filler strips - one or two-page stories of pain, heartbreak and horror. Poor Wobbly-Headed Bob tries to convince the rest of the world to accept that he's smarter than they are, and can't understand why they want to kill him. True Tales of Human Drama are just that - dramatic, probably human and god I hope they're not true. Happy Noodle Boy is a free-form anarchistic story, allegedly drawn by Johnny himself, and I can never manage to finish one. My favorite filler strips are the Meanwhile.... strips, one of which features two elementary-school crossing guard children enacting the final battle between two entities of pure evil. Another depicts a first date gone horribly, horribly awry as a case of gastrointestinal distress engenders one of the best attempts to save face I've ever seen. A horrible, lying vampire, the revenge of the pinatas, and a case of childhood attachment issues gone horribly wrong, these are some of my favorite works in the whole series. The work of Jhonen Vasquez certainly isn't for everyone. Even his famous animated program, Invader Zim, is a little weirder than most people are willing to accept for a children's show. It rewards patient reading and careful attention to the artwork. Which, I might add, is distinctive and disturbing and wonderful. Vasquez has created a style that's cartoonish and yet horrible, in which childlike glee can be rendered next to heart-stopping horror, and we can perfectly believe that they exist in the same world. It's strange, horrible and funny all at the same time. If you're interested in something out of the ordinary, I can definitely recommend this. ...more |
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Mar 22, 2010
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 1592400876
| 9781592400874
| B007F932H2
| 3.87
| 105,663
| Jan 02, 2003
| Jan 01, 2003
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it was amazing
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This is how I know I'm a real English teacher - I have a shelf dedicated to books just about English. The history of English, the uses and misuses of
This is how I know I'm a real English teacher - I have a shelf dedicated to books just about English. The history of English, the uses and misuses of English, and even the history of the alphabet we use. This is something I never expected to have in my personal library, that's for sure. But that's all to be expected; I'm an English teacher, and people like me are supposed to read books like this. It's professional development, or something. The weird thing about this book, a book dedicated to punctuation, of all things, is that it was popular with people who weren't English teachers. Everyone was shocked by how well it sold, the author included. A book written as kind of a primal stickler scream somehow struck a chord with the general reading population. Perhaps there is some hope for our species after all.... The reason it sold well, of course, is that it's well-written and entertaining to read. Far too many books about language are written by dusty intellectual Linguists who exude smugness with their impenetrable jargon and are completely inaccessible to the general public. I have those books on my shelves as well, and nothing this side of a double shot of NyQuil is as good at getting me off into slumberland. Ms. Truss, however, writes like one of us. She's an ordinary person who loves her language and who just snaps every time she sees a sign like, "Apple's - $1". I share her pain. The book is a well-mixed combination of history, usage and style. The tiny marks that make the written English word behave the way it does have come to us along a remarkable number of paths. In the last millennium or so, marks have been added, changed and removed over time as necessity dictated. One of her fears (and the impetus to write this book) is that we may be changing English to a new form that requires less of that rigid, form-fixing punctuation. Or people just haven't bothered to learn. As she notes throughout the book, punctuation is one of those things that few people ever really get to learn. Our English teachers give it a once-over in elementary school, and then we never get a review of it, so we spend most of our lives just throwing around commas and apostrophes and hoping we get it right. More often than not, we don't. And we're afraid to ask anyone, lest we look like ignorant yobs. But to master punctuation means more than just being a pedant and a nerd. Heavens, no. Mastering punctuation means controlling your language, which is controlling your thoughts. The vast difference between a sentence like, "The convict said the judge is mad" and "The convict, said the judge, is mad" should be enough by itself to illustrate how important proper punctuation is. In a language like English, so dependent on rhythm, timing and stress, punctuation is the substitute for our voice. It tells us when to speed up and slow down, which points need to be stressed and given special attention, and which points (like this one) can be safely disregarded, if one so chooses. It would be very easy for Ms. Truss' obvious frustration with the misuse of punctuation to overwhelm her and poison the book. Admittedly, she does at one point put together a kit for those who would be punctuation guerrillas and risk prison to set the world straight, but by and large she stops short at advocating actual lawlessness. Ms. Truss understands that punctuation abuse isn't something that people do intentionally - it's largely a matter of ignorance, and she wants to help. What's more, she's funny. For example: In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.Every section in the book has sharp and clever humor, a description of something as simple as a comma made in such a way that you find yourself laughing out loud on the train. So, if you've always wanted to know about how to use a semicolon, or you're not sure if your commas are in the right place, or if you've ever driven someone to madness by dropping an apostrophe into a possessive "its" - and you know who you are - then this book is the one you need. Enjoy. ...more |
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Jan 31, 2008
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Hardcover
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| 0765315246
| 9780765315243
| 0765315246
| 4.23
| 202,997
| Dec 27, 2005
| Dec 27, 2005
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it was amazing
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Somewhere in the unspecified future, humanity has reached out beyond the solar system, settling colonies wherever they can find a habitable planet. It
Somewhere in the unspecified future, humanity has reached out beyond the solar system, settling colonies wherever they can find a habitable planet. It's the inevitable expansion of the Human Race, finally freed from its precarious position on Earth. With the new skip drive, capable of taking people vast distances in aonly a moment, a whole range of new and interesting worlds are open to hardy settlers willing to make new lives for themselves. Unfortunately, there are many alien races out there with the same idea, who need worlds with similar climates and resources. And very few of them are keen on sharing with us. So, in order to protect the human race against its competitors, the Colonial Defense Force was set up - a space military whose basic mission is to deal with the alien menace by whatever means necessary. No one on Earth has ever seen a CDF soldier. Nobody knows anything about them - how they fight, where they fight, or even whom they fight. People do know one thing, however - there's always an opportunity to join. Protect and serve. If you're seventy-five years old, that is. The CDF isn't interested in hotheaded youths with no experience. While they have traditionally been the main component of the soldiering class, they are erratic at best, cannon fodder at worst. The CDF is looking for an entirely new type of cannon fodder, hopefully one with a better head on its shoulders. Therefore, the CDF recruits from the elderly. The theory is that once you get to be seventy-five years old, you've seen a bit of the world, you know how much you don't know, and you're less likely to be infected with the special brand of insanity that comes along with being in your late teens and early twenties. So, on your sixty-fifth birthday, you go to the recruitment office for a routine physical and a basic description of what you're in for. Ten years later, if you're still around, you join up for real. There's no turning back, though. Join the CDF and your life on Earth is over. You will be declared legally dead, and there will be no coming back to your home planet, ever. For many people, this might be a somewhat intimidating proposition. After all, the Earth is the only home we have. But once you're seventy-five and looking your mortality straight in the eyes, it might be a reasonable price to pay. As for the myriad physical problems that come with being 75, well, there are ways of getting around that. The book follows John Perry, a widower-turned-soldier as he fights for the safety of people he doesn't know, in a universe he's only beginning to understand. Once he begins his new career as a soldier, he discovers that, to paraphrase Sir Arthur Eddington, the universe is stranger than he can imagine. He is taken to new and interesting worlds to meet new and interesting species of intelligent life and, more often than not, to kill them. Along the way, he has to deal with new takes on the old questions that have plagued philosophers for centuries - what is identity, what is duty, and what is the function of war? Even the nature of reality itself pokes its head in to cause a little trouble. All through this, John Perry is just trying to keep his head down and get through his tour of duty - but you know it can never be that simple. This was Scalzi's first novel, and as first novels go it was just the kind you want to have. Exciting, funny, nominated for a Hugo and immensely popular. To say nothing of being reminiscent of Heinlein (if Heinlein had had more of a sense of humor). Not only do we have a cracking good military space adventure, but we're introduced to a far wider universe that Scalzi will later expand upon. The "Old Man's War Universe" is vast and exciting, and as of this writing, there have been three more books that take place in it. With that in mind, this book is mostly exposition. While the adventure parts are adventurous, the vast majority of this book is laying down the important concepts that are necessary to understand the book and those that follow. And so we get a lot of explanation about what the CDF is and how it operates, why it needs its soldiers and how they're prepared for battle. We're introduced to the BrainPal (tm) and SmartBlood (tm) and the MP-35 Rifle, truly one of the most useful weapons ever made by man. We meet a variety of alien species - some disturbingly ugly but gentle, others utterly adorable baby-eaters, and still more who believe that murdering other life forms is an act of religious grace for which the murdered should be thankful. Lucky for us, Scalzi chooses the most logical way to do all of this exposition - the main character is as clueless as we are. He also needs everything explained, sometimes in vivid and gruesome detail, in order to make sense of the universe in which he now works. By following John Perry through basic training and his first year in the CDF, we start to understand the basics. The rest will come in later books, and our learning curve will be somewhat accelerated. The book manages to hit all the right notes - it's exciting, it's poignant and it's funny. John Perry has been given a quick and sarcastic sense of humor, which reminds me of a lot of my friends, so I felt an immediate kinship with him. We like the people he likes, we care about the things he cares about, and we understand what it is that keeps him going, even when he's risking his own humanity in the process. In short, John Perry is a character who is at once singularly interesting and at the same time easy to identify with. This, I must say, is a tough feat to pull off. If you like funny, exciting, universe-scale science fiction, pick this up. If you're interested in how our eventual coexistence with aliens might one day go, give this a read. And by all means, if you're a fan of Robert Heinlein - and you know who you are - definitely get this book. ...more |
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Oct 23, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0375508325
| 9780375508325
| 0375508325
| 4.40
| 149,058
| 1980
| May 07, 2002
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it was amazing
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If you've known me for more than a little while, you know that one of my great loves in this world is science. Even though I tend to get stymied by th
If you've known me for more than a little while, you know that one of my great loves in this world is science. Even though I tend to get stymied by the math, and I probably couldn't call up all the right data from my head at the right time, it is the idea of science and the stories of science that truly interest me. Just the fact that we live in a universe where it is possible to know how things work, where we can devise a way to look at the whole of creation, from things so large that they defy imagination to things so small that they can barely be said to exist at all. Science is imagination put into practice against the universe, and as much fun as stories and myths are, as hope and prayers may be, science is the best, most reliable way for us to come to grips with the Cosmos. It is to Carl Sagan that I owe this love of what humans have done with ourselves. When I was a kid, my father had a copy of Cosmos, and, since I was but a child, I never really read it. I tended more to flip through it for the interesting pictures - the speculative Jovian life forms on pages 42 and 43, the Viking photos of Mars in chapter 5, the gorgeous paintings of the views from other worlds around other stars, the photos of nebulae and galaxies, all of these things fascinated me, and if I had been a bit more patient I would have found out about them. But I was a kid, so that can be excused. What the book did for me was to open my mind to a universe of possibilities that were all within our reach, or at least would be someday. As I got older, I saw the TV miniseries of the same name on PBS. Now the pictures that I had lingered over in the book were right before me, accompanied by Sagan's soothing baritone. His ship of the imagination somehow managed to take us unfathomable distances from our home and bring us back again. He talked to his viewers like we were intelligent adults, fully capable of understanding and appreciating the vast scope of scientific discovery rather than a bunch of attention-deficit teenagers who couldn't be trusted to keep watching without a jump-cut every ten seconds. Carl Sagan believed, despite the occasional evidence to the contrary, that human beings were capable of overcoming our barbaric pasts and forging a bright new future together in the stars. The purpose of Cosmos, both the book and the TV show, was to educate. It was, as Sagan put it, "to engage the heart as well as the mind," perhaps to help shed the image of science as a cold and passionless pursuit. He wanted to show how science became what is is, from the ancient scientist/philosophers in Ionia and Alexandria all the way up to the engineers and astronauts working at NASA. It's all part of a long chain of knowledge that ties human history together and which engages one of our deepest desires: to know how the universe works. Each chapter focuses on a different theme of knowledge - from the way the planets form and what they're like to the nature of the furthest reaches of space. He starts with how Eratosthenes measured the world with just a shadow and some math, and how the ancient thinkers of Alexandria were asking the same questions about the nature of the Earth that we ask today. He follows the tortured path of Johannes Kepler in his quest to understand how the planets move, the arrogant brilliance of Newton as he completely redefined the clockwork of the cosmos, and the casual miracle that Einstein pulled off when he told us that not only are we not the center of the universe but that there is no center. Each great mind led to another. Unfortunately, each setback cost us what may be valuable time. For all his wonderment, he understood how petty and ignorant human beings could be. From the beginning, and at various points in the book, he reminds us of the millennium we lost with the destruction and corruption of the ancient thinkers of the Mediterranean. As far as we can tell, the men and women who made their home in Alexandria were investigating questions and scientific problems that would have changed the way we understand the world. If the library hadn't been burned down, if religious terror hadn't murdered scientific insight, who knows where we would be today? It's impossible to know, but it's tempting to think that we might have been well on our way to the stars by now. The latter chapters underscore that theme pretty heavily, reminding us over and over again that we have one world, and only one world. Not only does Sagan fear that we could obliterate ourselves with the nuclear weapons we love and fear so much, but he also fears that self-annihilation may be a natural outcome to any intelligent civilization. Our search for intelligent life on other worlds may be fruitless, because they might be just as self-destructive as we are. But we don't know. We can't know, at least not yet. Our understanding of the universe is still not clear enough, our technology is still not good enough, and perhaps it never will be. But for all our stumbles and failures, Sagan wants us to remember and understand just how much humanity is capable of, and how good we could be if we really put our minds to it. And in that sense, there is a lot of value to reading it now, thirty years after it was published. While we have not eliminated nuclear weapons, we have made great strides towards controlling them and reducing their numbers. The hopes that Sagan had for future space exploration - Mars rovers, a probe to Titan, contact with comets - have all been made real, and with outstanding results. We know that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor impact - something that Sagan is clearly unsure of at the time of writing. We have mapped the human genome and developed personal computers that have revolutionized the way we explore space. With the internet, any person on earth can catalog galaxies or explore the moon, there have been advances in nanotechnology and materials and bioengineering and evolution that would have made even Sagan's eyes pop. Despite all our flaws, we continue to advance. We continue to build knowledge upon knowledge and to further our understanding of how the universe works. Maybe we will one day leave this planet ourselves, perhaps just for a visit or perhaps to start a new world. Maybe if we persist in our quest to comprehend the world we live in, to shut out the howling and screaming of the voices of unreason, we can make the world a better place for generations to come. In the great argument that is raging these days between the rationalists and the believers, the faithful and the atheists, it has become fashionable to try and shout the other side down. To adopt a position that excludes compromise and promises only defeat for one side or another. Sagan never would have wanted that, and I think he hit upon a solution that needs to be revisited. Rather than try to turn people to science through cold logic or heated words, through derision and coercion and fear, do as Sagan did: win them over with wonder. The cosmos is too big, and there is too much to know to waste our time with petty arguments and pointless feuds. If you want people to appreciate science, turn to people like Sagan, or Neil deGrasse Tyson, or Phil Plait, or Michio Kaku, or Bill Nye, or Adam Savage,[1] people whose enthusiasm and love of science will instill people with wonder, one person at a time. And it is in that way that we will go furthest towards ensuring humanity's place among the stars. ---------------------------------------------------- "Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another." - Carl Sagan, Cosmos [1] In the interest of fairness, I tried to come up with female scientists who were at the forefront of popularizing science with the public. I drew a blank. If you know some, please let me know so I can put them on the list.... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 08, 2011
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.39
| 431,089
| Mar 10, 1969
| 1991
|
it was amazing
|
This is a book that you can't refuse.... Sorry, just had to get that in there. This is truly a fantastic book, better than the movie, and the movie is r This is a book that you can't refuse.... Sorry, just had to get that in there. This is truly a fantastic book, better than the movie, and the movie is really good. One thing that I marveled at is how closely the movie stuck to the book - word for word in places - and how well it treated the source material. Coppola gave the book the respect it deserved, and as Don Corleone would say, respect is the best thing there is. We all know the story - it's the tale of a powerful mafia family, brought to the edge of destruction, only to rise up stronger than before. We know the characters - the brilliant patriarch, Vito, the hot-tempered Sonny, and Michael, whose destiny brought him to the heights of illicit power. We find out that Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes, Carlo Rizzi damned himself the first time he hit his wife, and there's no worse way to wake up than with a horse's head in your bed. But what makes the story even more entertaining is that it's not really a story about the Mafia. It's the story about family, about standing by the people who stand by you and about the high standards a true man must live by. Yes, they make a living by doing things that in polite society might be "illegal," but they do so because the legitimate authorities do not provide them with the means to see that their families are safe and successful. It's all anybody wants, really, but for a young Vito Corleone, there was no way to do that within the bounds that the law provided. So he made his own law. He did it, though, with respect and friendship first, acting on the basic principle of the Golden Rule - if I act as a friend to you, you will act as a friend to me. Is that not how reasonable men behave? Should that friendship be betrayed, however, the consequences could be dire.... It does rather glamorize the mafia culture, turning the Corleone family into a kind of benevolent lordship. The reality of the mafia and organized crime is, I'm sure, much less noble than as portrayed here. But I'm not reading this for research material - I want a good story and characters I can really get behind. This book has them in spades. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 10, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 4.32
| 124,586
| 1992
| 1993
|
it was amazing
|
This was the first Pratchett book I read, and I'm glad of it. While it has the humor and satire that is inherent in all of the Discworld books, it als
This was the first Pratchett book I read, and I'm glad of it. While it has the humor and satire that is inherent in all of the Discworld books, it also has something else - something to say. It was evident, even from the first time I read this book, that Pratchett had put some real heavy thinking into it. This book is, as the title suggests, about gods. Where do they come from? Where do they go? What keeps them moving? Ordinarily, gods don't like this sort of question. People who think are not what gods look for in followers. Gods want people who believe. That's where their power comes from. Gods with many believers are stong, great gods. Armies of priests and worshipers attend to their every needs, the sacrifices are plentiful and their dominion is vast. A great God wants for nothing. A god with no believers, however, is a small god, a mindless thought blistering through the firmament, searching with single-minded fervor for one thing: a believer. What happens, then, when a Great God finds out that, while he wasn't looking, he lost all of his believers? That's the thrust of this tale, the story of the Great God Om and how he became a tortoise for three years. It's about the difference between what is real and what is believed in, and how much difference that can make at times. It's about fundamental and trivial truths, and how to tell them apart. It's about eagles and tortoises and how much they need each other. Above all, it's something of, in my opinion, a statement of faith. Many people ask me if I am religious, and I tell them no. That's partly due to this book and the thinking that it made me do. Spiritual? Sure. Religious? No. This is, as I said, the story of the Great God Om, who discovered, about 300 feet above the ground, that he had been a tortoise for the last three years. Before this mid-air revelation he had been just chewing at melons and wondering where the next lettuce patch was. Suddenly, all the self-awareness of a Great God was put into his head, as well as the knowledge that he was probably about to die. Om had intended to manifest as a bull or a pillar of fire - something much more majestic and Godly - but for some reason, that hadn't worked. He had become a tortoise. Now, in the presence of Brutha, a novice in the Church of the Great God Om, the god remembers who he was, and discovers that he's in a lot of trouble. The Church of the Great God Om. There's something to talk about. Many people believe, upon reading it, that it's an allegory for the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. The Omnian Church permits no heresy. It permits no sin, no disbelief. Violating the precepts of Om and His Prophets can lead to death, in a lingering and painful manner. The Quisition cannot be wrong, for was it not Om Himself who put suspicion into their minds? It's a tactic that has been used by many religions over the years, often to justify acts that they know their god would not approve of. I don't believe that Pratchett was trying to take a stab at the Catholics in this book. It's just an unfortunate coincidence that the Omnians and the Catholics bear a few points of similarity. A rigid hierarchy, for example. A penchant at one point or another for extracting confessions by any means necessary is another. It's all very efficient and effective. There's a problem, though, as is pointed out by Brutha late in the book: if you beat a donkey with a stick long enough, the stick becomes all that the donkey believes in. At that point, neither gods nor believers benefit. The only people benefiting are those wielding the stick. Instead of becoming a tool for inspiration, the church becomes a tool for terror. People do not obey their god out of love - they obey their church out of fear. This is the kind of church that could produce the Deacon Vorbis, head of the Exquisitors. He is one of those men who would turn the world on its back, just to see what would happen. He is everything that is wrong with the Church and, unfortunately, it seems that he is in line to be the Eighth Prophet. In other words, Omnia is not a nice place to live. Its church is vast, its god is small, and neighboring nations want to take it down a few pegs. It's up to Brutha and his God to change the course of history. As I said, there was a lot of thought put into this novel, as well as Pratchett's usual hidden research. For example, Brutha is called a "Great dumb ox" by his classmates, due to his size and apparent lack of intellect. The same epithet was thrown at Thomas Aquinas by his classmates, and he was canonized less than a century after his death. Like Aquinas, Brutha is not dumb. He is simply slow and careful in how he thinks, and his measured pace leads him far more surely to the truth than the hot-headed and passionate men who march with him. Some people read this book as an attack on religion. Others see it as a defense of personal faith. I think Terry had a story to tell, and perhaps a point to make. The beauty of books such as these is that they can be whatever you want them to be. For me, it came as a kind of defense of gods. Humans, the book suggests, need gods. Now there is a growing atheist community out there who disagree with that idea, and I can definitely see where they're coming from. As I've said many times, I'm not entirely sold on the god idea yet. But the gods that are rampant in the Discworld aren't the kinds of gods that the atheists and the true believers fight over - the omnipotent creator of Everything. They are gods who are controlled by humans, who exist with humans in a kind of co-dependent relationship. Humans need gods, and gods need humans. In its way, this kind of theology makes gods more... realistic to me. I can't say for sure whether a god or gods exist, but if they did, I think I could live with this kind of arrangement. What this book definitely is, in any case, is good. Very good. If you haven't read it, do so. If you have read it, do yourself a favor and read it again. --------------------------------------------------- "Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Laste the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed." - from the writings of the philosopher Abraxis, Small Gods --------------------------------------------------- ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Nov 26, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 4.16
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 04, 2009
|
Feb 04, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.66
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 12, 2009
|
Jan 13, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.17
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 06, 2009
|
Jan 05, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.12
|
it was amazing
|
Apr 04, 2008
|
Apr 07, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.21
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 30, 2008
|
Mar 30, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.48
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 10, 2008
|
Feb 09, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.09
|
it was amazing
|
Jun 11, 2006
|
Feb 06, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.01
|
it was amazing
|
May 13, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.11
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 21, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.03
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 16, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.15
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 28, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.07
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 22, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.03
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 11, 2010
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 3.93
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 12, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.34
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 22, 2010
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 3.87
|
it was amazing
|
Jun 30, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.23
|
it was amazing
|
Oct 23, 2006
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.40
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 08, 2011
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.39
|
it was amazing
|
May 10, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.32
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 26, 2008
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
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