Wednesday, May 28, 2008

May '08

MIDDLEMARCH
-G. Elliot-classic
-800-a look at a village named Middlemarch in the 1830's. Lots of people acting like people, ie, selfish and stupid. It was interesting, but people refused to talk to eachother and that really annoys me.

FOUNDING OF THE COMMONWEALTH: DIUTURNITY'S DAWN
-A.D. Foster-scifi
-341-I didn't even know what Diuturnity meant. It means "long lasting". This novel is about the actual founding of the HumanX commonwealth. Each book became less interesting than the previous.

PUDD'NHEAD WILSON
-M. Twain-classic
-224- a negro woman switches her baby and her masters. The new young master grows up and ends up killing his uncle for money. Is caught by the work of Pudd'nhead Wilson, a lawyer who has an interest in fingerprints. Ends with the switch being revealed and the new young master being sold down the river[they are in their 20's].

SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE SIGN OF FOUR
-A.C. Doyle-mystery
-100-a man is murdered. He is connected to another missing man, who has a daughter who comes to Holmes and Watson. Turns out there is a huge indian treasure involved. 4 men stole it and hid it. Then went to prison. The murdered and missing man found out about it and made a deal to free the prisoners for a part. Backstabbing. Prisoner escapes and takes his revenge. Watson ends up marrying the daughter.

LITTLE DORRIT PART I
-C. Dickens-classic
-433-a man and his family go into debtors prison. 20+ years later, through the efforts of a 40 yearold man recently returned from China, they come into money. Dickens has so many different threads all running at once that it is hard to define just what the exact story is. There is the story of Little Dorrit[youngest daughter, born in prison], of her family, of Mr Clennam [the middleaged man from china who it appears Little Dorrit is in love with], of some italian who has a tie to an english murderer, to Mr Clennam's business partner[who is in perpetual warfare with the Circumlocution Office of government]. It is SO fascinating though. Dickens descriptions of his character is perfect. From comparing them to inanimate objects in mannerisms to how they simply talk, you KNOW what Character X is like. I am just in awe.

RECLUCE: THE WHITE ORDER
-L.E. Modesitt, Jr-fantasy
-468-Finally, a novel from a white wizards point of view. From the time of Justin and Gunnar. A young white ends up being a wizard under Jeslek while trying to figure out everything. Shows that the White Order was in place to check unbridled chaos wizards[which is what happened in the time of Lerris]. Much more enjoyable than the Justin and Gunnar arc.

TEMERAIRE: EMPIRE OF IVORY
-N. Novik-fantasy
-404-dragons of England are all sick. Temeraire isn't. They figure it must be something he ate in Africa on his journey back from China. Bunch of sick dragons go to Africa. Find a cure. Laurence and others are captured by a tribe of Africans and taken prisoner. The tribe of humans and dragons wipes out all European towns along the coast. Laurence and others escape to England. English infect rest of European dragons, now that they have a cure. Laurence and Temeraire go to France with the cure. Ends with Laurence and Temeraire preparing to head back to England to face court-martial for treason. Ok, Novik is a history buff.It shows. Once again, the dragons are given very little character developement time. They are almost just a sideshow to allow Novik to probe into alternate history. I don't care 2 bits about most of what goes on in the human society, I want dragons! And Novik insists of slogging through the human society and dragging us along.


LITTLE DORRIT PART II
-C. Dickens-classic
-398-everything comes to an end. Fortunes are lost and gained. In the end, Rigaud dies, Clennam marries Little Dorrit and Doyce [his business parter] goes off to Europe to be wildly successful at inventing things. I think I really enjoyed this Dickens novel the best of all I've read so far. I just wanted to keep on reading and find out what happened. I can't really point out what I liked more than in his other novels, but this is my favorite Dickens, to date.

THE FOUR LOVES
-C.S. Lewis-religious
-192- can't say that I really enjoyed this. About the four different kinds of love. Lewis, however, goes into so many different kinds of love that I was lost almost from the beginning. Good points about "love", not sublimated to God's Will, being demoniac and "God usurping", but not a clear, concise read. I hope to reread this several times in my life, and to understand it a bit more each time.

DEATHNOTE #13: HOW TO READ
-T. Ohba-manga
-270-this is pretty much an encyclopedia of everything in the Deathnote series. Character bios, explanations of who did what and why, etc, etc. Even had the original "Deathnote" pilot chapter that Ohba wrote. A bit of a hard read, since there was just SO much info. Not really a manga, in the traditional sense. Definitely including this in my "number of books I read this year" as a "real" book :-)

THE CATTENI: FREEDOM'S LANDING
-A. McCaffrey-scifi
-342-aliens invade earth, take lots of prisoners. A bunch get dumped on a new planet to see if it is "safe" for the alien overlords. Main character is a woman. She falls in love with one of the alien overlords, who has been abandoned on the planet with them all. Ok, but nothing that I really liked. Might read the next couple, might not. Depends on how I'm feeling I guess.

CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN
-F. Gilbreth Jr & E. Gilbreth Carey-biography
-180- a hilarious semi-biography of a family with 12 children. Back in the 19'teens or so. Really made me laugh. A good "read out loud to the family" kind of book.