Book Review Monday

[arkiewriter]

Book reviews, books 28-32.

Brief version: George Orwell: Animal Farm - 4 stars. Andrei Codrescu: The Blood Countess - 0 stars. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt - 2 stars. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: Hotel Transylvania - 5 stars. Lois Lowry: The Giver - 5 stars.

Comments

[eruth]

The Kim Stanley Robinson Mars Trilogy is a lot better than 'The Years of Rice and Salt' I gave up on that over a year ago, but recently felt the need to re-read the Mars books. It's a nice idea, but it just didn't work for me.

[arkiewriter]

Well, if we keep on the every third Saturday library schedule we're currently on, I'll have to request the books (they're actually at a branch library) and get them shuffled over and waiting for me. I know I could drive to the other branch, but sheesh... the teeny branch there gets ALL the good stuff instead of the main library.

I think I've been avoiding "trilogies" in general. I don't want to have to read THAT much in one world all at once, I guess, but at the same time, I don't want to spread it out so far that I forget what happened in book 1 or 2. Bad enough when you discover a trilogy early in and have to wait years for the next book. ;-)

But the Mars trilogy, along with George RR Martin's fantasy epic and Tad Williams' Dragonbone Chair stuff... definately on my short list still.

[wykdkitten]

You are SUCH an inspiration to me!!!

Somehow, in all my classic sci fi reading, I never actually got around to reading "Animal Farm". "1984" put such a fear into me (in 1983 it was)that I avoided Orwell after that. Now, I've got to fill in that gap! Which kidlet are you planning for "1984"? The torture described makes me very hesitant to think of it as suitable for anyone under 15, or a VERY advanced 14....

And.. and...I read the first...3? 4? Xanth novels... and then... I have no idea what happened.. I just.. didn't get them anymore. Now I've got to methodically list them all and set out upon reviewing the extended series!!!

I fell in love with the St.Germaine series years ago, but had trouble easily locating most of the books. Excellent vampire reading :-)

Thank you thank you thank you for your synopses!!!!!

[eruth]

I read the Orwell novels at school - they were on the list for our English Lit coursework papers.

First time I read Animal Farm I was way too young, and just thought of it as a tale about animals, it's only now, when I've read something about Orwell's life - the edition of 1984 I have has a short biography on it - that I understand exactly what he was getting at.

1984 is one of those that just scares me everytime I read it. It's kind of like Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' in that you could see it happening.

[arkiewriter]

Thankfully, this copy of Animal Farm has Orwell's bio pertaining to the novel right in front, so he'll go into reading it knowing about things already. I expect he'll have a lot more questions about that era of history after he reads it, just like he had a lot more questions about the Holocaust after he read Number the Stars.

[arkiewriter]

I missed a lot of sci-fi classics (thus I'm playing catch up with things like Brave New World and Fahreinheit 451 this year). Actually, I gave kidlet Animal Farm. I couldn't say for 1984 until I've actually read it. I didn't let him have F451 because I didn't care for the murder scene towards the end. Hero or not, it just didn't seem like true self-defence to me, and I try to only hand him books with violence if it feeds to the moral of the story.

J1 is the kidlet in question, btw. He's waded through a vast majority of the "regular" classics so far, much more than I read at his age, and when we've tested him on them, his reading comprehension is a lot better than we truly expected. He sometimes picks up on things that I missed myself in reading the same books as a teen. We follow the same procedure with movies (especially graphic ones like The Patriot, which we felt they shouldn't be shielded from the fact that war is ugly, bloody, and horrible, no matter what the cause).

He's going to be reading The Scarlet Letter soon.