Bill Wood
Hmm. I'm not sure what to think about this one. I probably did it a disservice using this book as my “read while falling asleep if I go to bed before my wife” book. That means it was read occasionally, in small pieces, sometimes while struggling to keep my eyes open, until I finished it one day while waiting to apply for a passport and reading the final 80 pages or so.
I've probably seen the movie, but don't remember much about it except the iconic scenes. I do want to have the voice of HAL for a GPS and for my voice mail. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the book for me was the Forward to the Millennial Edition. That was pretty riveting.
As for the book itself, although I only rated it three stars, it will likely go up over time. I appreciate the seminal nature of the book, the unique process by which it came to be, and the impact on society. I feel I missed a lot by not giving it the attention I think it needs, because I missed a lot. I am, however, now spending a lot of time watching reviews, videos on the difference between the book and the movie, and generally picking up many of the things I missed. I'll definitely be rereading it.
Knowing the great swaths of information that was left out of the movie I have little desire to try to see it again as a way to understand the book better, but I am interested in watching it for its artistic merit and the amount of controversy it spawns from people who “just don't get it.”
I don't think Arthur C. Clarke is just destined to disappoint me. I did quite enjoy Rendezvous with Rama, and I do look forward to reading Childhood's End, but I don't have a driving desire to read more of the Rama series or the Space Odyssey series. Am I missing out? Am I not “getting” Clarke and his writing? Perhaps I need to focus more on the ideas than the execution. In the meantime, when I put a book down and I'm spending my time thinking about it instead of running to grab the next one, then there is definitely something to be said for the book. Perhaps that reread will be sooner rather than later.
What a prescient novel to read in 2023! Perhaps it should be classified as horror, because when I look at the state of the world it isn't hard to imagine it devolving to this scenario.
The main character, Lauren, is in somewhat of a Cassandra scenario where she is telling people what will likely happen, but nobody will listen and will in fact actively deny and repress what she is saying. She is the lone voice of wisdom, or at least the voice of practicality without denial.
The novel explores hope, loss, and trust. How well do you really know people you have known all of your life when the world you know crumbles? How do you know you can trust people you have just met? How can you maintain your moral code when the world around you does not follow that same code, and you are pressed in to acts that you would not normally do?
The author makes a bold choice in exploring the beginning of a religious movement while simultaneously setting its goals far beyond just establishing morality. Earthseed is the metaphor for the titular Sower, and where in Maslow's hierarchy is space exploration when you need to determine where you are going to get your next meal or drink of water?
I look forward to reading the second book, and I'm sad that the third book in the trilogy wasn't finished before the author's death. (Doing a little research I see the author intended for there to be several more novels in the series, too.)
I have to say that I don't think this book aged well. I have fond memories of this series from when I first started reading fantasy several decades ago. I specifically only remember one story, The Vivisectionist, from Shadows of Sanctuary, the third book. I don't remember any of the stories from this first book, and can't say any of the characters were that memorable for me. I love the name Cappen Varra, and I did enjoy seeing characters from one story show up in another. It is similar to the enjoyment I get when Stephen King is self-referential, or when there are literary allusions in other stories and forms of entertainment.
Perhaps it is because I have read a LOT of fantasy in the intervening years, but the distinction between each writer's style was rather pronounced to me. I'm a huge Joe Haldeman fan on the basis of loving The Forever War, and I think Blood Brothers was the most interesting story in the book. I don't think I'm going to continue a reread of the series. Perhaps, but there are so many other books on my TBR clamoring for attention.
This one is a really hard one to review for me. I think I remember reading it as a child, but I don't remember much of what went on. I don't think I saw the movie, but I have a vague recollection of the general plot. So did I actually read it or did I just ingest societal knowledge of the story by osmosis?
Either way, I chose it as a book to read to my seven year old daughter at bedtime. The chapters are a reasonable size except for one long one near the end. The story is fine, except that the mention of guns in the beginning kind of freaked her out, and it was nothing more than a man getting a shotgun out and looking at it.
She did enjoy the adventures of the animals and became really concerned for them. Eventually she did lose interest and got distracted by Tea Dragon books and didn't want to go back and finish this one.
We struggle to find books that work for her because she has a very advanced vocabulary and reading level, but a very low tolerance for scary and frightful situations. This book worked well for that, because although it is presumably written for children, it is written in a very literary manner.
“It is a country of far-flung, lonely farms and a few widely scattered small towns and villages, of lonely trappers' shacks and logging camps. Most of its industry comes from the great pulp and paper companies who work their timber concessions deep in the very heart of the forests; and from the mines, for it is rich in minerals. Prospectors work through it; there are trappers and Indians; and sometimes hunters who fly into the virgin lakes in small amphibious aircraft; there are pioneers with visions beyond their own life span; and there are those who have left the bustle of civilization forever, to sink their identity in an unquestioning acceptance of the wilderness.”
That is certainly not “See Dick run.” or “I do not like green eggs and ham.”
It gave us an opportunity to talk about the word Indians and how, as a Canadian book, it might in these days use the term First Nations, or here in the United States use the term Native American.
I was left to finish it on my own, and it is a quick read. It felt a little anti-climactic, perhaps suffering from the conflict between writing a literary story and one that did not want to lose the attention of children.
I'm glad we read it, and look forward to finishing our date with Tea Dragons so we can move on to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Thought-provoking, emotional, wrapped up a bit too neatly. Reading the author's note in the back of the book gave me a greater appreciation for the passion, interest, and work that went into this book, and the bibliography is a great resource.
I had been looking for this book for months and finally found it for sale as an ebook. Once I started reading it I had reservations about a book on race written by a white woman, especially when there are so many classic books by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou et al that I have not read, particularly one laced with so many n-words. It made me wonder why I passed so many classic works by African American women to read this one written by a white woman. Was that part of my personal bias?
Anyway, it did a good job of showing growing awareness in a white “non-racist.” It showed two ways of dealing with racism from the point of view of the protagonist and her sister. It reminds me of Cornel West in Race Matters. He spoke of race-effacing, race-identifying, and race-transcending people of color, and I think those dynamics are explored here. It explored the contradictions of hate, similar to the laundry scene in American History X and when the antagonist sees others around him soften when children and other priorities are introduced. It takes a lot of energy to hate, and in some ways it provides hope that in this current environment we can hope that extreme elements who feel emboldened to be overtly racist will one day wake up to the reality that love is what powers the universe and that we all need to work to dismantle racism.
There weren't any pat answers, and I didn't expect there to be. There were moral lessons, hard conversations, and the realistic portrayal of the delicate, painful, and rewarding nature of inter-racial friendships and the shallow nature of most “friendships” like those we share with co-workers and people we grew up with.
Well done, Ms. Picoult. Kudos!
This was a very interesting book. While not a barn-burner, and it doesn't pretend to be action-packed, it was an interesting hard-science mystery, with new developments right up through the end of the book. It does make me interested in continuing on to The Gentle Giants of Ganymede. Comparable to 2001 or Rendezvous with Rama or Eon, so it is in good company and well worth the read.
Catherine Clinton had to don her detective gear to put together this biography. What do you do when the figure you are writing about has very few records extant? Enslaved people are often without official documentation of their dates of birth, family circumstances, marriages and relationships. Active participants in the Underground Railroad needed to not keep records, for obvious reasons. A Black woman acting as an “official” spy or nurse for the young United States is not going to have records kept of each spy mission. So the author had to do what she could with records that exist, and extrapolate or postulate about the rest. I do not begrudge her doing so. She did say “Harriet Tubman felt this way...” but instead “Harriet Tubman may have felt this way...” which is valid and nothing more than we as readers would do when given an ambiguous circumstance.
On the other hand, the author did fill in a great deal of the important context of Harriet Tubman's environment. Information about contemporaries and allies such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, William Seward, and John Brown bring useful insights into the challenges and disparate approaches to battling slavery.
She also pointed out controversies, challenges, and alternate points of view about many things. For example pointing out the dialect used on a plaque in Auburn, New York as problematic and undermining of the stature of such a heroic woman and an example of white-dominant culture's condescending view of an “illiterate fugitive slave.”
Throughout it all, Harriet Tubman's courage and faith shine through and is inspiring. Her sense of purpose, single-minded focus on justice, ingenuity, grace under pressure, and the circles within which she socialized belie any humble beginning as an unlettered enslaved woman. I have a better appreciation of her as a giant among heroes and found the book very enjoyable.
This was not an enjoyable book. I read it to preview it for my 8-year old daughter who loves dogs. I found the main character so unlikeable, and the ending so fairy tale, that I felt there wasn't enough redemption to make the slog worth it.
I get that we are supposed to relate to her unfortunate situation as a way to make her sympathetic, but there was little reflection, little growth, just several episodes of her ignoring her conscience, being jealous of her brother when he had a good idea, calling him names, being rude to her mother, and just on and on.
I won't be passing it to my daughter.
I received a copy of this book from a Goodreads drawing.
This is not the kind of book I normally read, but after this I may start reading more. Just as a point of reference, one reason I grew up loving Stephen King books is because I was raised in Maine and he wrote about areas I knew and lived in. That made those books special.
Ms. Divakaruni also made this book special by it being based on a real person who I knew nothing about. I found the main character compelling. You could feel her love for her brother, and her husband, and the loyalty to those who helped her. You could feel her sorrow and anger at the betrayal of those who were not loyal. And through it all she never felt unrealistic. She wasn't infallible, she was human, and while at times she was living the dream, at other times she was brought very low.
I think what I liked about it so much was that it made a part of history, the colonialization of India by the British, very personal. They say history is written by the victors, but in this case we get a glimpse into the other side of the story.
It felt to me like a kinder, gentler Game of Thrones, but that really is doing it a disservice. I'm not sure what element of historical fiction resonated with me so much, so I'm not sure where to go from here. Was it simply the characterization, or was it also that I find East Indian culture so fascinating? Was it the time period? Was it the fact that it was the voice of the minority instead of the same old stuff we are taught in schools in the United States?
Whatever it was, I really did enjoy it more than I thought I would and unreservedly recommend it.
Really a 3.5 stars out of 5.
This is an odd one. It was first published in 1981. There are elements of Foundation, in that someone with foresight sets things up in the beginning. It feels like a mystery, because clues are followed throughout to the conclusions at the end. It is sci-fi, since they travels in space ships to this planet, and it feels like a martial arts fantasy for most of the book. It feels like a Zen treatise or a book of Eastern philosophy, because there is a lot of discussion of mindfulness and The Way.
It starts off leaning hard into the trope of “Student looks for Master. Master humiliates student. Wax on. Wax off. Student demands lessons. Student gets lessons. Student doesn't like lessons. Student learns, and continues travels.” That was probably the least interesting part of the book because it was so trite, but before and after that, Jerome's travels are interesting. The mystery really kicks in and you aren't sure where it is going to go. Jerome meets interesting people, particularly Chaka and the merchant, and situations where he has to use his wits. The ending was somewhat predictable, and the book is short. It naturally leads to the next book, and perhaps today all four books would have been released as one.
The chapters are pretty short, so the book propels you forward pretty quickly. The prose was direct, having a few really nice spots. My favorite paragraph in the whole book was the beginning of chapter VII:
“Once again the days followed the sun over the horizon like identical beads on a string. There was no sense in counting them, no logic to keeping track. To number each would have been to differentiate it from all others, to name this the Day the Tree Lizards Sang, and that the Day They Didn't, one the Day that Brought Rain, another the Day the Sun Shone. But it was useless, for even the differences repeated themselves, and even the similarities changed. It was a rhythm that needed nothing to complete or complement it.”
Some may find the amount of philosophy off-putting in comparison to the action, a lot of which happens off-screen. I enjoyed it. I'm not going to pick up the sequel immediately, but I do plan to pick it up relatively soon.
A solid book.
A wonderfully intriguing world with three-dimensional characters that show growth through their adventure. It built to a wonderful climax that was riveting. I'd like to check out other books by this author.
This book was fantastic! It has very interesting characters and an imaginative world. It was definitely world-building on a grand scale, because you just get the feeling that we have barely scratched the surface even though this book was huge. Though a little slow in some places, the structure and pacing were very good, and by the time it got to the climactic conflict I was breathlessly looking for any excuse to ditch work so I could continue reading. I love that there is so much more to learn about this world and these characters, that there are strong female characters, and the combat with Shardblades and Binding were so brilliantly done.
I don't know what I expected, but this wasn't it. I knew it was considered a classic. It is a collection of thematic vignettes of varying lengths, from just a few paragraphs to several pages. The book is short. The beginning was rather cheeky, with several expeditions to Mars and the results of them. I found the middle of the book a bit meandering, but it really hit its stride with several of the longer stories being very riveting.
My favorite stories were:
–And the Moon be Still As Bright - a commentary on colonialism
Usher II (which I found brilliant) - a commentary on the cost of censorship
The Martian - a commentary on loss and grief
The Luggage Store - a pithy short but meaningful conversation
The Off Season - where the plot takes a dark turn
The Silent Towns - a statement on our materialism and shallowness
The Long Years - where not everything is as it seems
There Will Come Soft Rains - almost a meditation on the potential disaster of nuclear war
The Million-Year Picnic - a poignant end
Having gone back through the book to pull out my favorites made me realize how much I did enjoy the book. It provoked a lot of thought.
One thing to be aware of, though, is one story (Way in the Middle of the Air) that addresses racism through the eyes of racists in the Jim Crow south and is one of the few stories that take place on Earth. It is disturbing in its portrayal of the bigotry and actions of the main character and in the repeated use of the n-word. It does not feel as gratuitous and “natural” as the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, but is jarring nonetheless. It is a commentary on racism, and having been written in 1948 by a white man lacks any subtlety, but fits the theme of the book in calling out humanity's shortcomings.
Overall a very good book and it entices me to want to read more of Bradbury. The prose is often beautiful, full of imagery and poetic phrases.
It was a very interesting steampunk world with an imaginative take on races, technology, and magic. The antagonists were a bit one-dimensional, and the character development was a bit clumsy, with lots of telling, not showing, especially with regards to the relationships between the three protagonists. The protagonists Arianna, Cvareh, and Florence are all interesting and three-dimensional and the plot for the most part was engaging.
I got it as a discounted ebook, and I'd definitely read the next book in the series.
It won the Hugo. It is a classic. I had expectations. I enjoyed Stranger in a Strange Land. I had seen the movie.
I was underwhelmed. I knew it was different than the movie, but I think what happened was that in transforming it from a YA novel to an adult novel, it kind of landed in a limbo that was less than the sum of its parts.
There was a lot of philosophizing. It is known for that. I didn't take it as preachy, or necessarily as a manifesto of Heinlein's personal beliefs. He explored issues, and that doesn't mean he espouses them.
I was in the Navy for ten years. I felt there was a lot of wink-wink, nod-nod such that when he was overblowing the rah-rah spirit of military he was doing it tongue-in-cheek. There is a kind of eye towards the military that someone who had been in the military, like him, would resonate with.
One of the chapters that resonated the most with me was the one where he was describing being assigned to a Navy ship that had women on it. It is absolutely true the rivalry between branches of the armed services, particularly between Navy and Marines. And there is nobody more rah-rah than Marines, in my experience. So the rivalry felt true. The opinion of the Navy that all other branches are unnecessary because the Navy could take care of it all is shared by many. In real life we always heard a saying that “the Army has more boats than the Navy and the Navy has more planes than the Air Force.”
The other part of that chapter, about the sequestering of the women except for officers, and standing guard to make sure people didn't go forward of the restricted area rang true, also. I've seen many times where military men would code-switch in the presence of women, even though some military women were rougher and cruder than some of the men. There would be less swearing, more deference, and constant guard against fraternization. It is a potent dynamic. I was on submarines, and there were no women. Now they do allow women on submarines and I'd love to talk to someone who has experienced that, especially a woman to get her point of view.
Back to the story, the first half of it was okay because I kind of knew where it was going but not quite. The second part was less enjoyable because I always gloss over when they start using lots of ranks of services I'm not familiar with, and describing platoons and squads and other groupings of personnel that I don't know the difference between.
The mission for “Operation Royalty” was interesting and enjoyable, and the end of the novel was satisfyingly open-ended for there to be a sequel. Perhaps on further reflection or reading, now that I know what to expect, it will increase in my estimation. It did inspire me to pick up Heinlein's Expanded Universe book to read more about the backstory of this story, and I look forward to exploring more of his works.
I didn't know what to expect, having watched the movie and only having read the first Foundation book. I didn't expect a set of short stories tied together, but since I had recently read The Martian Chronicles it wasn't unfamiliar.
Here we have the famous introduction of the Three Laws of Robotics, which we've probably all heard. Personally, I loved the exploration of the loopholes, moral implications, and interaction between humans and robots that was present here.
I know some people don't like Dr. Susan Calvin, but I see many signs of Hari Seldon in her. Her ability to extrapolate the laws and predict how robots would act through her expertise in robopsychology was as wonderfully enjoyable as psychohistory. Her similarity to robots in being a cold person who thought more highly of robots than man was very metaphorical. There were parts of the story Liar! that belied this which I didn't really enjoy, and felt the author was portraying this woman a bit stereotypical, and she is the only substantial character that is female. Overall the book is both “of its time” in some ways and way ahead of its time in others.
I enjoyed the story “Speedy” and how they solved their problems. I liked the twists in “Reason” and the ending of “Liar!” and really enjoyed “Little Lost Robot.” “Escape” was a little weird, but I loved “Evidence.”
I'll probably continue my exploration of Asimov through the Foundation series before exploring more Robots, but very much enjoyed this book.
It was entertaining. I didn't get bored while reading it, but it was just a bit YA for me. Too many silly examples of dialog and writing that jarred me out of immersion, like “That's what she said.”
Not just once, but twice that I remember.
Seriously? I know you want Gideon to be edgy and cool and angsty, but that just didn't work for me.
The world building was interesting. The mystery setting was interesting.
I had a hard time following everyone since they were referred to by many different terms and names.
“Thanks, Palamedes.”
“Sextus was a marvel.”
Those are the same person, referred to in two consecutive sentences, and aren't the only terms used to identify that person. I was reading an ebook and not a physical book, and if I was reading the physical book I'd have been able to easily flip back to the Dramatis Personae to help with that issue.
I bumped this up the TBR because a good friend raved about it as one of his favorites. Perhaps the expectations were too high.
The first edition of the compilation was 5-star yummy! This one was good, but there was only one extraordinary story (The Earth Ship by Graham Storrs), one really good one (Digital Commander by J.S. Morin), and the rest were enjoyable, but this collection certainly wasn't the mind-blowing, ravenously engrossing level of the previous one.
Very interesting and imaginative, I loved the mix of technology and magic and the sense of wonder. It kept compelling me to keep reading to find out what was going to happen next.