Inspired by drachin8's post along these lines, I thought I'd make a list of the best books I read in 2009. I read a lot last year thanks to studying for comps and doing research for my dissertation (in addition to just wanting to read, of course) and posted reviews of some of them here and probably even more on my goodreads pageHere, in the order in which ( Read more... )

Blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone. (188)
Jose Saramago's Blindness describes what happens when, for no clear reason, everyone goes blind. This blindness reaches all but one character in the novel and is apparently spread through contact. In response to the spreading blindness, the government quarantines those who ( Read more... )

I might write a review later. For now, having read the book and seen the movie, these are just some quotes from the book that I find meaningful--personally and for the text.

Rorschach:Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone ( Read more... )

In Neal Stephenson's Anathem (which I just finished and will hopefully get around to writing about soon), Stephenson has one character say,Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.
I've been ( Read more... )

I am a bit divided about Joan Vinge's The Snow Queen. I greatly enjoyed most of the book, but it does take a long time to set all the events and characters in motion and then, because so much is going on, it takes longer than I'd like to conclude. On the other hand, after the action gets going and before it concludes the book becomes difficult to ( Read more... )

Thomas Disch's On Wings of Song is a multi-layered, interesting novel because it addresses issues of power (familial, governmental, disciplinary), the value of art, the relationship between mind (or soul) and body, and the relationship between appearance and reality.

( Power, Art, Body/Soul, Appearance/Reality )

In Dreamsnake, Vonda McIntyre tells a captivating and moving story about a healer, Snake, and her quest to find a new dreamsnake after the death of her first, Grass. Along the way, she meets a man, adopts a young girl, travels great distances, and overcomes many hardships, physical and emotional. She proves herself to be honorable, strong, wise, ( Read more... )

Joanna Russ's The Female Man (1975) is a complex and fascinating examination of gender roles and ideology. In it, Russ contrasts and intertwines the stories of Joanna (a 1970s feminist of a world much like, if not identical to, our own), Jeannine (a young, fairly stereotypical woman of an alternate timeline in which the Depression never ended), and ( Read more... )

Let's start by determining what Suzy McKee Charnas's Walk to the End of the World is not:

( What it's not--and what it is. )

Like most (if not all) of Philip K. Dick's work, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? addresses truth and reality, asking questions such as these ( Read more... )