I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN: FEBRUARY 2009 EDITION

[defrog]

I read books. You crave book reports. And here we are.

JUST FINISHED

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
“I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.” What a great opening line. And boy does Scalzi make good on it. Familiar territory for anyone who’s read Starship Troopers and The Forever War, but Scalzi brings some updated technology to the mix, and strikes a balance between the former’s pro-imperialist stance and the latter’s anti-war message. The real secret is Scalzi’s breezy writing style – you can imagine reading it out loud to an audience. The ending is a little too sentimental for my taste, but otherwise, well done.

JUST STARTED

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
Well before The Guardian told me to read this, I’ve had several people recommend Chesterton to me, and this is the first book of his I’ve ever seen in print since being hipped to his name. I bought it at last year’s book fair, and now it’s time to see what all the fuss about.

RECENT TITLES

Spook Country by William Gibson
By no means the spy novel that the title suggests, but an interesting take on the fractured post-9/11 surveillance landscape where yr not sure just who works for who anymore. I also like Gibson’s idea that thanks to GPS and location-aware apps, we’ve effectively exported cyberspace to the real world. It took me awhile to appreciate that Gibson was giving me a radically different take on the spy story, but I may have to re-evaluate my initial cool response to Pattern Recognition (the first book in this sequence) after reading this.

Peace On Earth by Stanislaw Lem
This is my second venture into Lem territory, and I remain amazed by his ability to cram 500 pages of action into a 220-page book. The premise of mankind exporting the arms race to the moon – and the main character’s brain being separated into halves so he keeps secrets from himself – is demented genius. If you like PK Dick but haven’t yet read Lem, I highly recommend you start.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
His second collection of short stories and poems, to include a novella that serves as a mini-sequel to American Gods. Some are better than others, and the first collection (Smoke And Mirrors) is stronger overall, but most everything here is typical of the Gaiman catalogue – full of dark wonder and darker humor – so fans won’t be disappointed. The American Gods story alone is worth checking out.

The Greatest Show Off Earth by Robert Rankin
Continuing my attempt to read the entire Rankin back catalogue, this is a one-off story involving Hollow Earth Theory, a traveling space circus and a demonic half-man-half-chicken. Among other things. Notable for Rankin’s ability to completely disregard science (there’s air in space, you know). Fun, if not essential.

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
One of his later books, in which his alter ego Jack Dulouz is now famous as the King Of The Beats, but is unable and unwilling to live up to his own reputation and finds himself wallowing in paranoid alcoholic depression that leads to a mental breakdown in Big Sur – which is more or less what happened to Keroauc in real life, and it eventually killed him, which makes it an even more harrowing read. Probably not for everyone, even if you liked On The Road.

Tales of ordinary madness,

This is dF

Comments

[puffdoggydaddy.livejournal.com]

Old Man's War is on my read list.