I didn't read a large number of books this past month, but what I did read was more fantasy-heavy.
The Lost World - Michael Crichton (1995)
"Looking at the fossil record is like thumbing through a family photo album. You know the album isn't complete. You know life happens between the pictures. But you don't have any record of what happens in between, you only have the pictures. So you study them, and study them. And pretty soon, you begin to think of the album not as a series of moments, but as reality itself. And you begin to explain everything in terms of the album, and you forget the underlying reality."
I didn't like this book as much as its predecessor (Jurassic Park), but it was still very readable. It didn't feel as polished, but it still contained a good blend of action and discussion of science. Some of the personal dislikes issues that I had with the previous book (namely violence, i.e. fairly graphic descriptions of people being eaten by dinosaurs) still apply.
Related Reads:
Jurassic Park (Crichton)
Coming Up for Air - George Orwell (1939)
"I looked at the great sea of roofs stretching on and on. Miles and miles of streets, fried-fish shops, tin chapels, picture houses, little printing shops up back alleys, factories, blocks of flats, whelk stalls, dairies, power stations - on and on and on. Enormous! And the peacefulness of it! Like a great wilderness with no wild beasts ...
But how about five years from now? Or two years? Or one year?"
This is one of Orwell's lesser-known books, but if you're a fan of his works in general, it's certainly worth picking up. Though fictional, its setting gives us a slice of history and opinion into a period - immediately-preceding-WWII Britain - that one doesn't often think about. It's nostalgic, pessimistic, dryly funny at times, and strangely sad.
Related Reads:
Boy (Dahl)
Babbitt (Lewis)
The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro (2015)
"After a while Axl could no longer remember how talk of this journey had started, or what it had ever meant to them."
The tone of this book is meandering and dreamlike. It's strangely hard to place in terms of genre, too, though the setting is an interpretation of an immediately post-Arthurian Britain. At its core, it's a sort of fantasy, but it has echos of science fiction/dystopian. There are some changes of perspective throughout, which I felt added some interest.
Overall note: this book is really not going to be for everyone. Even though I personally appreciated it, I'll still admit that it's slow-paced, repetitive, and even largely unsatisfying. All that said, I still found that I could immerse myself in it, and I appreciated the out-of-the-norm interpretation.
Related Reads:
The Once and Future King (White)
Le Morte d'Arthur (Malory)
The Name of the Rose (Eco)
Riddley Walker (Hoban)
Mort - Terry Pratchett (1987)
"History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time."
Mort is one of Terry Pratchett's earlier Discworld novels. I really liked it - it's about on the same level as Equal Rites, which is another early Discworld favorite of mine. It's fairly straightforward story line full of a healthy blend of humor and seriousness (especially considering the subject matter). If you haven't read any Discworld novels yet, this isn't a bad place to start.
Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett (1991)
"People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way."
This is the second book in the "Death" storyline of Discworld novels, so it's the sequel of Mort in a way. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as its predecessor; it's a little odd and rambling at times (arguably a Pratchett trademark, but I digress). Still, it's likable overall, with the same balance of serious/humorous tone.
The Lost World - Michael Crichton (1995)
"Looking at the fossil record is like thumbing through a family photo album. You know the album isn't complete. You know life happens between the pictures. But you don't have any record of what happens in between, you only have the pictures. So you study them, and study them. And pretty soon, you begin to think of the album not as a series of moments, but as reality itself. And you begin to explain everything in terms of the album, and you forget the underlying reality."
I didn't like this book as much as its predecessor (Jurassic Park), but it was still very readable. It didn't feel as polished, but it still contained a good blend of action and discussion of science. Some of the personal dislikes issues that I had with the previous book (namely violence, i.e. fairly graphic descriptions of people being eaten by dinosaurs) still apply.
Related Reads:
Jurassic Park (Crichton)
Coming Up for Air - George Orwell (1939)
"I looked at the great sea of roofs stretching on and on. Miles and miles of streets, fried-fish shops, tin chapels, picture houses, little printing shops up back alleys, factories, blocks of flats, whelk stalls, dairies, power stations - on and on and on. Enormous! And the peacefulness of it! Like a great wilderness with no wild beasts ...
But how about five years from now? Or two years? Or one year?"
This is one of Orwell's lesser-known books, but if you're a fan of his works in general, it's certainly worth picking up. Though fictional, its setting gives us a slice of history and opinion into a period - immediately-preceding-WWII Britain - that one doesn't often think about. It's nostalgic, pessimistic, dryly funny at times, and strangely sad.
Related Reads:
Boy (Dahl)
Babbitt (Lewis)
The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro (2015)
"After a while Axl could no longer remember how talk of this journey had started, or what it had ever meant to them."
The tone of this book is meandering and dreamlike. It's strangely hard to place in terms of genre, too, though the setting is an interpretation of an immediately post-Arthurian Britain. At its core, it's a sort of fantasy, but it has echos of science fiction/dystopian. There are some changes of perspective throughout, which I felt added some interest.
Overall note: this book is really not going to be for everyone. Even though I personally appreciated it, I'll still admit that it's slow-paced, repetitive, and even largely unsatisfying. All that said, I still found that I could immerse myself in it, and I appreciated the out-of-the-norm interpretation.
Related Reads:
The Once and Future King (White)
Le Morte d'Arthur (Malory)
The Name of the Rose (Eco)
Riddley Walker (Hoban)
Mort - Terry Pratchett (1987)
"History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time."
Mort is one of Terry Pratchett's earlier Discworld novels. I really liked it - it's about on the same level as Equal Rites, which is another early Discworld favorite of mine. It's fairly straightforward story line full of a healthy blend of humor and seriousness (especially considering the subject matter). If you haven't read any Discworld novels yet, this isn't a bad place to start.
Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett (1991)
"People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way."
This is the second book in the "Death" storyline of Discworld novels, so it's the sequel of Mort in a way. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as its predecessor; it's a little odd and rambling at times (arguably a Pratchett trademark, but I digress). Still, it's likable overall, with the same balance of serious/humorous tone.
