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Thursday, August 10, 2006

Non Comic Post: Book Meme

Tagged by Ragnell and Loren:

1. One book that changed your life

After Dachau by Daniel Quinn.

2. One book you have read more than once

Fire's Stone by Tanya Huff

3. One book you would want on a desert island

The Fortress in the Eye of Time by C.J Cherryh (and the sequels)

4. One book that made you laugh

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, because so many people recommended it to me and I found it utter tripe.

One that genuinely made me laugh is Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett.

5. One book that made you cry

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. It gave me nightmares as a child.

6. One book you wish had been written

Men are from Earth, Women are from Earth: A How-To Guide for Writing Good Female Characters by M. Krause (That's me, naturally. :-))

7. One book you wish had never been written

The Songmaster by Orson Scott Card. His own explanation in this explains why far better than I could.

Suffice it to say, a man so virulently opposed to homosexuality writing a book heavily featuring his take on homosexuality is rarely a promising combination.

And it's very poorly written to boot.

8. One book you are currently reading

The Silent Tower by Barbara Hambly

9. One book you have been meaning to read

The Oracle's Queen by Lynn Flewelling

10. Tag five people!

Ack! Tagging is hard and awkward! Um...
CalvinPitt, Diamondrock, Dorian, Elayne, and Melchior, if any of you guys are interested.

Not that I'm not interested in what everyone else has to say of course!

(I'll probably try a comic book specific one later. :-))

posted by kalinara @ 7:30 AM  

19 Comments:

  • At August 10, 2006 8:31 AM, Blogger Matthew E said…

    The Silent Tower! Hambly's one of my favourite authors, and Antryg is my absolute favourite character in all of fiction. I hope you've got The Silicon Mage and Dog Wizard ready to go?

     

  • At August 10, 2006 8:44 AM, Blogger kalinara said…

    :-) Definitely. First time I read the book, I didn't have Silicon Mage.

    That's one really annoying cliffhanger, let me tell you. :-)

     

  • At August 10, 2006 9:27 AM, Blogger Matthew E said…

    Yeah. I read them when they first came out, and I had to wait for The Silicon Mage. (To give you some idea how young and callow I was, when I first read it I thought she was setting Joanna and Caris up as a couple and couldn't understand why it didn't happen that way. You know, because Caris is the hero and the warrior; isn't he supposed to end up with the heroine?)

     

  • At August 10, 2006 11:44 AM, Blogger Seth T. Hahne said…

    Hm, I read Ender's Game in 6th grade and liked it well enough back then. But I was in 6th grade so we can take that for what it's worth.

    I haven't read anything else by Card, so I haven't read The Songmaster, but I did read the last half of what you linked to (the intro just seemed like boring introduction!) and I'm not sure "virulently" is the right adverb to describe his opposition to homosexual activity (he seems to object to homosexual activity itself rather than homosexuality).

    The picture I gathered from his words is that he likes homosexuals, finds many of them to be good people, and doesn't see any moral problem with the inclination. He does, however, believe the prophets of his faith and points out that as they categorize the activity as wrong, so must he.

    That doesn't strike me as the tone of a virulent man. Maybe he would better be described as obstinantly opposed or dogmatically opposed. Virulence conjours images of poisonous, venomous, intentional hatred.

    But maybe the virulence came in in the first part of his essay. I don't know.

     

  • At August 10, 2006 11:56 AM, Blogger Zaratustra said…

    You don't actually need to read more than one book by Card. They have built-in redundancy. Hell, you could read Ultimate Iron Man and be done with it.

     

  • At August 10, 2006 12:36 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Oooh! Some great books and some that I haven't read yet. So, I'll have to pick them up.

    PS -- SO DITTO on The Songmaster. Ugh...

     

  • At August 10, 2006 1:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    K.
    You really need to read some Vonnegut. I recommend most of them, since he is my favorite author, but try "Cat's Cradle" or "Slaughterhouse 5" for starters. I have read him in the subways of NY and I have laughed outloud at all the blank faces. He makes fun of all of us, but not overtly. Having read your blog for the last few months makes me believe that you would like him.

     

  • At August 10, 2006 1:32 PM, Blogger Seth T. Hahne said…

    Vonnegut's great, and I loved Cat's Cradle and Mother Night (Sirens of Titan was cool too), but Slaughterhouse Five must be one of the most overrated books of all time. At any rate, it's far from his best.

     

  • At August 10, 2006 2:35 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I'll be vain enough to share.

    3. A Practical to Building Rafts out of Palm Trees and Coconuts. Or Decline and Fall... by Edward Gibbon.
    4. Catullus' epigrams.
    5. The Lords of Discipline. "You not only don't have to give the child up for adoption son, you don't even have to worry about marrying the mother."
    7. Books? How about plays? All of Shakespeares'.
    9. Macrobius' Saturnalia

     

  • At August 10, 2006 2:35 PM, Blogger Matthew E said…

    Counterpoint: I found Vonnegut very unpleasant. (Although Galapagos wasn't too bad.) I honestly think Vonnegut hates humanity.

     

  • At August 10, 2006 2:58 PM, Blogger kalinara said…

    the dane: I admit, it could be the impression I get comingled with recollections of other things he said.

    Still, for me, reading the essay, he essentially sensationalizes something that is very natural, at least to the people involved.

    I'll acknowledge though that in this case virulence might not be the right word.

    It's still an awful book though. :-)

    Zaratustra: Hee, too true. Though I actually liked the Alvin Maker books.

    Loren: :-) I'm looking forward to your serious one as well. :-)

    anon: I admit, I've never read much Vonnegut. I'll give him a try.

    the dane and matthew: I'll keep that in mind.

    anon: Nice list. :-)

     

  • At August 10, 2006 3:15 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Dane,
    The thing about Slaughterhouse Five is that it's the first book with Kilgore Trout. He creates his tapestry, his universe, with that book. He doesn't hate humanity, he laughs at it. That's the charm. Galapagos started off slow, but what a great punchline! Yeah, I'm a fan.

     

  • At August 10, 2006 9:33 PM, Blogger Seth T. Hahne said…

    Kalimari: Yeah, haven't read much Card so I'll have to take your word for it. I did read some of his Iron Man, which didn't really inspire much confidence in his work.

    Matthew: Yeah, Vonnegut really kinda does hate humanity (strangely, him being a humanist and all). Anon says that he merely laughs at humanity, but it's a sad, bitter kind of laugh - the kind that may have once been genial but has turn sour as frustration gives way to hatred.

    And Galapagos was definitely interesting. It was 200 pages of prologue and 100 pages of epilogue with nothing separating the two. I've read it a couple times and not known what to make of it either time.

    Anon: There are other reccuring characters in Vonnegut prior to the introduction of Trout (if S5 was his intro). At the least, characters from Sirens of Titan and Mother Night meander there way through his novels. As a confession, I never really thought much of the Trout character - which could explain why I'm not as much a fan of his later works (most everything from S5 onward).

     

  • At August 11, 2006 1:00 AM, Blogger Hale of Angelthorne said…

    Almost anything by CJ Cherryh is gold, especially the Merchanter stories.

     

  • At August 11, 2006 2:44 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Has anyone ever read "Ferdinand the Bull?" It was one fo the first books that I read and it made me want to be a pacifist. So I guess that qualifies as a book that changed my life. Years later, I'm still trying to be a pacifist.

     

  • At August 11, 2006 10:31 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    You know, Ihave never finished Ender's Game. Read all the way up until the last chapter or so then dozed off and read something Star Trekian.

     

  • At August 12, 2006 7:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    personally i loved enders game when i read it in my mid teens. it's kinda melodramatic and predictable but man oh man it really enthralled me back in high school.

    i think the key to the book is you really have to be a geeky, slightly angsty teenage boy to really get anything out of it, otherwise like you said it'll just come off as laughable.

     

  • At August 15, 2006 2:11 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Cards supr smart heroes are also annoyingly stupid Ex. Bean vs achilies

    Kal one question, can aguy understand your book? It'd be helpful just in life because you and another female I know often cause me to asume (or at leastwish to) the fetal position!-)

     

  • At August 15, 2006 6:56 PM, Blogger kalinara said…

    anon and the dane: Wow, you guys are making me want to see this book. Anything that can inspire much love or hate has to be interesting.

    hale: I agree. The Fortress series is my favorite though. :-)

    anon: I've never read it. Sounds interesting.

    carla: You didn't miss much, IMO. :-P

    david: Hee, that must explain it. :)

    green: Of course, it's written for anyone. :-)

     

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