Books I've Read (2008): Postcards, Time Travelers Strictly Cash, & The Subtle Knife
I participated in the 50bookchallenge last year as a way of forcing myself to think about books after I'd read them. And it worked, but I realized I don't want to write up my feelings on every book I read. There's only so many ways to say "Hana-Kimi was enjoyable; Sano and Mizuki are still being boneheads about their feelings for each other" after all. So I'm doing something similar here but only for the books I want to say something about.
Postcards: True Stories that Never Happened, edited by Jason Rodriguez: It's got an interesting premise: take old, used postcards and give them to comic writers and artists for them to make a story around. The stories were, for the most part, enjoyable and even the ones I didn't like as much weren't bad per se, just not to my taste.
I do, however, wish that the introduction to each story hadn't been included because every single one told me what Jason Rodriguez thought the story would be when he gave away the postcard and then what the story that got written was about. And, okay, I want to be able to suss out what the story's about for myself, not be told that it's about the power of love and redemption, because it may not be about that for me. But, other than my annoyance at being told how to interpret the stories by the introductions, it was an interesting little graphic novel.
Time Travelers Strictly Cash, by Spider Robinson: I bought this book because I'd heard good things about Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series and thought this was a collection of short stories from that series. (The back cover made it sound that way.) Turns out that only a third of the stories are, another third are unrelated science fiction short stories, and the last third consists of various non-fiction writings of his.
Despite looking at the back cover suspiciously once I realized what the actual contents were, it was a good book. The Callahan's stories were fun to read, and I always love a good (or bad, depending on how you look at it, I suppose) pun. The other science fiction stories were also good. I particularly enjoyed "Soul Search," which dealt with cryogenics and reincarnation. The non-fiction was...eh. Didn't hate it, could have easily lived with never having read "Rah Rah R.A.H." (Robinson's essay on why Robert A. Heinlein is the bestest), but I've also read more boring things and at least these were short.
The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman: This took forever to read due to losing it in my mom's car of all places for six months. (It drove me batty during those months too because I knew I owned the book and yet it wasn't anywhere in the house.) Anyway, about the book, I can now see why people decided the series has an anti-Christianity message. (I still think the people kicking up a fuss about said message are rather silly, but anyway.) I'm holding out on making any judgements about Pullman's big message until I read The Amber Spyglass because right now it looks too obvious where Pullman wants to go. And I'm hoping The Amber Spyglass is subtler than that.
Postcards: True Stories that Never Happened, edited by Jason Rodriguez: It's got an interesting premise: take old, used postcards and give them to comic writers and artists for them to make a story around. The stories were, for the most part, enjoyable and even the ones I didn't like as much weren't bad per se, just not to my taste.
I do, however, wish that the introduction to each story hadn't been included because every single one told me what Jason Rodriguez thought the story would be when he gave away the postcard and then what the story that got written was about. And, okay, I want to be able to suss out what the story's about for myself, not be told that it's about the power of love and redemption, because it may not be about that for me. But, other than my annoyance at being told how to interpret the stories by the introductions, it was an interesting little graphic novel.
Time Travelers Strictly Cash, by Spider Robinson: I bought this book because I'd heard good things about Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series and thought this was a collection of short stories from that series. (The back cover made it sound that way.) Turns out that only a third of the stories are, another third are unrelated science fiction short stories, and the last third consists of various non-fiction writings of his.
Despite looking at the back cover suspiciously once I realized what the actual contents were, it was a good book. The Callahan's stories were fun to read, and I always love a good (or bad, depending on how you look at it, I suppose) pun. The other science fiction stories were also good. I particularly enjoyed "Soul Search," which dealt with cryogenics and reincarnation. The non-fiction was...eh. Didn't hate it, could have easily lived with never having read "Rah Rah R.A.H." (Robinson's essay on why Robert A. Heinlein is the bestest), but I've also read more boring things and at least these were short.
The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman: This took forever to read due to losing it in my mom's car of all places for six months. (It drove me batty during those months too because I knew I owned the book and yet it wasn't anywhere in the house.) Anyway, about the book, I can now see why people decided the series has an anti-Christianity message. (I still think the people kicking up a fuss about said message are rather silly, but anyway.) I'm holding out on making any judgements about Pullman's big message until I read The Amber Spyglass because right now it looks too obvious where Pullman wants to go. And I'm hoping The Amber Spyglass is subtler than that.